Xcom First to Fight
by RogueK
Summary: A story written in serial style about the Alien Wars through the eyes of a single team with a very unconventional commanding officer.
1. Episode 1: First into the fight

It was a quiet cloudy night. 

Only the dog heard the noise of the large blocky object that descended towards the farm. To any human listeners it was as quiet as the night itself.

The dog heard though, and she made her disapproval of the UFO's presence clear.

The loud barks woke up the farmer's wife. In turn she woke up the farmer.

"Honey, could you go check what has Laika so wounded up?" She prodded him

He grumbled, but got up. He was awake now anyway.

He was halfway down the stairs when the barking was suddenly cut off. That made it clear to him something was genuinely wrong. He hurried down, found his shotgun and loaded two shells into it.

He opened the front door and peered out.

There was something large in the middle of his field. He raised the shotgun and started forward slowly.

Suddenly there was movement to his right! In panic he fired off a shot in the general direction.

There were sounds of scuttling, he fired off another shot, but nothing more. He fervently reloaded not even considering that shooting anything that moved may not be the right response to this sort of thing.

It wouldn't have made any difference. He saw a green flash then felt an intense pain in his torso before he collapsed.

The aliens had very clear orders regarding witnesses. Don't have any.

They moved in quiet efficiency to remove anyone who might tell a tale of what happened here.

oOoOoOoOoOo

X-com First to Fight

Episode 1: First into the fight.

oOoOoOoOoOo 

Somewhere in Switzerland

The young man stepped out of the cab near the small village next to an unassuming military base. Breathing in the chilly January air he started walking towards the base.

He was in civilian clothes as this was not a regular assignment, and he was carrying little luggage. It had been recommended he travel light. He assumed it was because it was a highly mobile unit, albeit he didn't know exactly what they did.

It was a real hush-hush outfit. There were some nasty rumors about high turnover, but he had no idea who they could be fighting and still cover that up here in the middle of Europe. He presumed it was just hardship duty so they transferred out fast.

In short he had not the slightest idea of just what he was walking into and if he did he'd probably have turned around and left on the spot. As he reached the gate he suddenly without any real reason imagined hearing ominous laughter. He looked around for a moment then shrugged it off.

If there was a Blood God it was overjoyed at the high probability for yet another lamb to the slaughter.

He did get a bit of a hint as he showed his transfer papers to the gate guard.

"Egon Olsen, Norwegian Army 2nd Lieutenant. Transferring to United Nations Special Response Force. Oh another bagwalker eh?"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh nothing, you'll find out soon enough anyway."

He considered himself an optimist, he really did, but now the ominous signs starting even back home when he got offered this assignment had built up to a point even he couldn't ignore them.

He stopped just inside the gate.

"All right, I get it. I've done something amazingly stupid and only now figured it out. Can you let up now?"

His religion (A firm believer in the gods of Irony) would rate that as a very pious prayer indeed.

He headed onwards in a different walk intent on tackling whatever lay ahead. He'd take it in a stride.

Poor bastard had no idea just what he was going to have to take.

oOoOoOoOoOo 

"The unit's name is X-com. And we fight aliens."

"Eh?"

"That's right." The disheveled commander of the underground base under the regular military base said. "We go out and kill little ETs."

"Whoa hold on. Are you serious or just drunk?" The young officer could smell the booze clearly.

"Both. But it doesn't make it less true. Surely you heard the stories."

"Well yeah, but I figured they were just experimental aircraft or something." Egon was completely off balance.

"They aren't. Aliens have arrived, and every time we've attempted to make contact they've responded with lethal force. So through the UN they formed X-com to calm the smaller governments down." Nonchalantly, but Egon got the impression that there was a core of bitterness under it.

"Hang on. A covert alien invasion makes no sense. If they got space travel they could do massive damage to earth no problem. We'd have no defense against them fighting from ultimate high ground."

"Given this thought I see."

"Well I like science fiction." Egon shrugged. He still wasn't entirely sure they hadn't sent that ahead and this was some sort of prank on him. Still the commander seemed sincere.

"And that fact is the reason X-com isn't taken very seriously. The aliens may not acknowledge us, and may take some minor actions that could be considered hostile, but if they were here to actually invade and do serious damage they would hit us much harder."

"What sort of hostile actions?" He had a cold feeling in his gut. He had two skills he was proud of; one of them was his ability to read people. And there was definitely something more here.

"Oh nothing really:. Weird over flights, cattle mutilations, abductions and disappearances, some of which are returned most of which aren't and were presumably killed to silence witnesses"

"So they kill civilians where they land and they consider that a minor issue?" Egon didn't want to believe that.

"Welcome to the world of large scale politics. Where individual people only matter if they have lots of money or can't be brushed under the carpets."

"So what do we have to deal with them?"

"One base, here in Europe, there was talk of having it in the US, but they felt confident they'd do just as good a job. One combat squad with soldiers who are supposed to be elite, but in reality tends to be those their nations of origins won't miss, and a pair of advanced fighters of Russian design to intercept UFOs with, that just about never flies due to lack of spare times and poor radar coverage of our own as well as poor integration with local systems. Meaning that when we do see one we're lucky to be able to launch anything."

That moment him getting the offer made sense, he had wondered why he got the recommendation for a job that was this highly paid when he had passed as last in his class rankings. He had not even been issued any posting before being offered to transfer to the so called UNSRF with ludicrously high pay.

"Do we have anything going for us?"

"Good pay for soldiers, good equipment, even if nowhere near the aliens gear, and snazzy ranks. That reminds me. You aren't a Lieutenant anymore."

"Eh?"

"We got our own simplified rank structure. There's no Lieutenant in it. You are therefore from the moment you entered X-com service a Captain. Here's your rank bar." He got handed a pair of rank bar with three spherical with Xs in them on it. 

"Wait. Just what job will I be doing here?" There was a sinking feeling.

"I thought it'd be obvious. You are the new combat team leader."

oOoOoOoOoOo 

He leant his forehead into the locker door. He was sorely tempted to start smashing his head into the locker. That might give him a concussion and get him out of this place. 

He didn't think he was arrogant. He knew his limitations. This sort of job he was absolutely not qualified for. And when he'd pointed that out to the base commander the only reply he'd gotten was that he was the only field officer they had so there wasn't much choice.

To summarize the situation their support was poor, their success was minimal and their turnover was immense.

They had tried with Special Forces at first, but when they lost the second team in a week that had been given up, by now they just got poor quality line infantry.

He fought back the urge to harm his brain by means of wrecking the locker with his forehead yet again.

He had barely gotten to pick up his gear before going here and stopping. Logically he should go and meet the troops, get some idea what he was working with.

That really didn't appeal to him right now. That sinking feeling was there in force telling him that he really didn't want to know what he'd find there.

What the hell was he supposed to do?

That's when he heard the door open. He stood up and turned towards the door.

"What are you standing around for soldier? Get a bloody move on!"

A man wearing the X-com fatigues and sergeant stripes on his shoulders entered the room. Egon's first impression was that he was incapable of speaking without yelling.

Egon bit back a response of the lines 'Do you always talk to your superiors like that?' not only would it be rude, but he would be the last person who could with a straight face school anyone on respect.

He took a closer look. The sergeant was quite a bit older than him, but seemed to have an air of irreverence to him. He looked worn, had probably seen actual action a few times. He also for some odd reason didn't have any nametag on his chest as he was supposed to.

"Sorry sergeant. I'm just a bit overwhelmed by the turn of events." Calm in face of this man of noise seemed the best bet. From his accent he guessed that the sergeant was English, he didn't know what sort of décor was normal when an officer out of uniform dealt with a non-com in uniform in Britain, but presumably it was similar to Norway's rule of not saluting when not in uniform or saluting people out of uniform.

He held out his hand.

"Captain Egon Olsen formerly of the Royal Norwegian Army at your service." Voice carefully measured as to not seem like he was disciplining him with his rank. This sergeant probably knew the outfit a lot better than he did so a good first impression would help a lot.

The sergeant stared at his hand for a moment as if it was something offensive, then reached out to shake his hand.

"Sergeant James Coburn formerly of the **Royal** Fusiliers of the British army." The slight emphasis on royal making it quite clear that he thought any other army claiming to be Royal in any way was just a cheap knockoff of the proper thing. He put an uncomfortable amount of force into his squeeze. Egon did his best to match it while trying to get a proper read on the man.

As far as he could tell this man was utterly unable to fake respect for somebody he didn't have any for. He also got the read that right now he had low opinion of officers who just came in from nowhere to take command without having any idea of the situation or people involved. Especially one as junior as Egon looked

Given that it was about the same that Egon would have felt if their situations were reversed (Thought he hoped he'd be able to hide it better) he decided he couldn't really fault him for that. Instead set about clearing things up.

"I presume you are the one who's keeping this unit going so you are the best qualified to give me some pointers how to best do my job here. I'll be honest. I don't have as much command experience as I'd like for this kind of job so I'll be relying quite heavily on you to do a passable job." 

Some people you best earned their respect by matching their hostility with your own. In this case deferring to his greater experience and making it clear you saw the trouble in the situation too would best defuse hostilities.

The sergeant's features softened barely as he released the hand. It'd have to do for now.

"So I guess I should get to meet the troops. I don't know how you are with formality here so should I bother to change into uniform first?"

"That would be recommended, yes." 

"All right then. Give me a minute and I'll be ready to do some introductions."

oOoOoOoOoOo 

"How long has X-com fought aliens anyway?" Egon was thumbing through a brochure regarding the base he'd been given alongside the gear.

"Not long. We started late 1998."

"Not that long then, we know any ways to beat them?"

"Only shooting them until they die seems to work." The sergeant answered in a non-comitial tone.

Not what he had meant, but still answered the question. The aliens were difficult to fight. There was no known specific anti-alien tactics.

Not that he was any good with tactics. He blamed tactics for being the reason he graduated dead last. He just couldn't get them right. Anything tactical he sucked at, war games, board games, computer games if it involved tactics he sucked. The only reason he'd passed at all was that tactics isn't that important for an officer anymore. It hadn't mattered much in his one mandatory non-com year, but it had dragged down quite when learning to be an officer.

Still. If there had been any he'd have been reassured.

They entered the mess hall. It looked much larger than what their amount of personnel should warrant. At one table near the middle sat six people in X-com trooper fatigues.

"Good afternoon gentlemen. I have been informed we just received a new fire magnet to lead us in the field."

"This is Captain Egon Olsen. Our new supposed commanding officer. Never faced the aliens before as far as I know."

They stood up getting to attention as best they could.

"At ease soldiers." 

"Captain these are your troops. This is Squaddie Andrei Volkov, Russian, has participated in two missions." A nod from one of the soldiers he now knew was the Russian. He looked young, but there was something with his eyes. A bit of hardness that marked him has a veteran of something nasty 

"This is rookie Robert Matthews, British, no missions." Another nod, this time from a smiling youngster with blond hair, he didn't look much like a soldier to Egon.

"Squaddie Fhajad al-Ansab, Egyptian, one mission." A friendly smile came together with the nod. It was a bit reserved, but the impression he got was that this was a dependable and intelligent soldier. Far from the stereotypes perpetrated regarding middle eastern.

"Squaddie Dominic Morgensen, Belgian, one mission." He seemed apprehensive as he nodded. Not willing to trust an officer without any missions. Those seemed to matter a lot here. He noticed now when his eyes wandered to the next soldiers that those with no missions and those with at least one mission had different rank badges.

"Rookie Natalya Berovic, no missions" A nod from the units sole female. She looked rough, not exactly what you'd get if this was a TV show. She looked like a warrior pure and simple. Not somebody he'd date, but to back him up she'd do nicely. 

"And finally Rookie Devon Archer, American, no missions." Cowboy, that was what he thought when he looked at this guy. He looked confident and cocky, probably a marine. He'd have to wait until a fight until he could figure out if he was dependable or not. Then again, he'd have to wait for a mission to figure out if he himself was dependable in a real fight

His sinking feeling eased off a little. He had expected worse. None of these seemed like disasters ready to go off.

Then why didn't he feel reassured?

oOoOoOoOoOo 

The X-com control center was not the sort of huge complex you'd expect from Earth's first line of defense. It was only modestly sized and had only half a dozen people on watch. In theory they got radar feed from every country in the region, in practice this was rather spotty. They had their own radar facilities that did most of the detection, a marvel of engineering able to push up to a tremendous range. Of course it only worked against UFOs which in general flew higher and faster than most planes, it had a far bigger lower altitude hole than most radar. 

It also was as reliable as most of X-com's custom gear. Which to date only one exception existed that was actually reliable.

This time though it worked.

"We have a contact. Coming up from lower, accelerating. It's at very least not civilian, but small sized" One of the radar operators reported.

"Confirm with local flight controls that nothing military is in that region." The shift leader said. Standard procedure that they all knew well, but habit insisted he say it out loud.

"Confirming" The communications officer set about doing so. The shift leader turned on his intercom.

"Commander this is CC, we have a probable UFO, working on confirming that. Request that Interceptor team be put on standby."

The middle aged man that was the X-com base commander may be somewhat alcoholic in response to losing so many people for so little gain. But he retained enough presence of mind to try to do his job. And it was routine by now.

"Affirmative CC. Giving the order now. They will launch on your order."

"Understood. Communications the show is all waiting for you."

"Just finishing up sir. Confirmed that it's not friendly, I say again not friendly."

"Interceptor Team you have a go."

oOoOoOoOoOo 

The hangar was busy like an ant-hill.

An interceptor was a horrible mishmash of American, Russian and British technology which hadn't been intended to put together. Consequently they were a reliability nightmare. And right now it bit them in the ass again.

"DAMN! Isn't there any way to get me in the air?"

"Not without those avionics. Sorry but you are sitting this one out."

"CC this is interceptor 2. I'm unable to launch. I say again, I am unable to launch."

"Understood Interceptor 2, it looks like this will be all Interceptor 1's show provided that plane doesn't crap out too."

The pilot cursed his fighter under his breath.

"This is Interceptor 1. I'm launching."

Thankfully they managed to get one of them up. It should be enough against a small UFO.

oOoOoOoOoOo 

The UFO had finished the scouting mission of the farm region and was heading for home. It just had to stay undetected long enough to get out of Europe and it'd be home free. Not that they worried much. Only occasionally had those infuriatingly fast human fighters been able to pick them up in time to catch them. And even when they went down they had excellent chance to fight off the human response and make repairs provided the damage wasn't too severe.

Still it'd be an inconvenience. 

This time they'd be inconvenienced. 

As they crossed the rough centerline of Germany the interceptor switched on its onboard radar to engage. Closing rapidly it armed the onboard stingray missiles. He had heard that base commander had clamored for making the heavier and much longer ranged Avalanche standard for intercepts, but had been overruled by his superiors who wanted to shoot the UFO down with as little damage as possible so there was more to salvage.

That in turn meant that the fighters attacking was put at greater risk using the shorter ranged and weaker stingray missiles backed only by the cannon pod. As it was they were sufficient to knock down the small UFOs they had faced to date, but there were reports of far larger craft that could very well be far better armed. Even so the small Stingrays would cut it against this small UFO.

"This is Interceptor 1. Target is a medium scout. Requesting permission to engage."

"Interceptor 1 you have a go. Weapons free."

An UFO engagement was not that interesting to watch. There was no maneuvers, no fancy evasion. It was simply an extended high speed chase where the interceptor blasted away at the UFO until one way or the other the engagement was forced to an end. It was a very simple straight forward engagement.

That didn't make it any less nerve wracking for a pilot going at it alone without support.

The UFO had just picked up the craft closing fast. The sheer amount of commercial traffic made noticing a hostile before the last minute hard. Standard procedure when detected by a military craft was to go full speed and attempt to outrun them, even shooting it down wouldn't be able to hide the contact from earth at this point. Unfortunately while easy in space that couldn't be done instantly in atmosphere. And even then they couldn't retain full speed for all that long with only one Elerium core and pushing against atmospheric resistance. At the moment they needed to hang on long enough to let the core start producing enough power for the engine and then accelerate. The scout carried only minimal armament and had little chance in a long range fight like this. It's only hope was to hang together long enough to escape.

They had started building power immediately as the enemy was confirmed as tracking them, but they didn't think it would be enough. 

They were right.

The entire craft shook as if Thor's personal hammer had hit them as a stingray missile got in a particularily good hit. The overcharging power plant was unable to take it. Suddenly power cut out to the gravity field keeping them in the air. They were going down.

"This is Interceptor 1. Target is trailing smoke and rapidly losing altitude. I will follow it down to confirm the kill then head for home."

"Roger that Interceptor 1. Good luck".

Now the rest of the job was for the bastards in the combat team. The pilot felt sorry for them.

oOoOoOoOoOo 

Egon was reading the various files on the aliens and what was known on them when the alarm sounded.

"Why now?" He hadn't even been here a full day and already there was an intercept? He headed straight for his locker to grab his personal weapon then to Hangar 1 as the procedure said he should.

The base was such a maze of corridors that he was afraid he'd get lost, but clearly marked lines on the floor showed him where to go. The base was made for rapid response all right.

Even with what he felt was admirable speed he found he was the last one to arrive, though by the way some of them were breathing it wasn't by much. But he could feel how tense the situation was. Given the supposed mortality rate he could understand that.

"Okay this is going to sound real stupid coming from the supposed ranking officer, but what do we do now?"

It defused the tension a bit, which was the point.

"We board the Skyranger, fly to an UFO crash site. Kill all the aliens, go home." The Sergeant summarized quickly.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Works for me." He shrugged. He could tell it wasn't that simple, but now confidence mattered, even if it was unwarranted.

"What is your standard procedure for taking out the UFOs?"

"We split into two teams. One goes for the UFO, the other sweeps the area for any hostiles in the surrounding areas. The little buggers love to have sentries in ambush."

"Sounds workable enough."

"It works some of the time yes." The Sergeant nodded.

Egon frowned. This sheer defeatist mentality probably made things worse. If he was to command this outfit he would have to do something about that. He'd have to figure something out when he came back.

'If you come back.' A tiny voice whispered in his ear. This was dangerous work, but he'd work on the assumption that he'd survive. It wasn't like he could do anything if he didn't survive, unless he could come back as a ghost that is. He grinned a bit at that as there were some people he really thought deserved a good haunting.

As he sat down in the skyranger he gave his weapon yet another onceover. The FN FAL wasn't fundamentally different in use from the G3 he was used to from the Norwegian Army, even fired the same cartridge, but even so it felt a bit unusual than his old G3. Still he'd manage.

He felt the vertigo as the elevator in the hangar pushed upwards and the hatch in the surface hangar retracted. Then the Skyranger stood inside a surface hangar and rolled out on the runway.

Technically speaking the Skyranger didn't need the runway, but it saved fuel to take off normally. He heard the chatter with the tower giving them clearance for takeoff and then the sudden acceleration of the takeoff itself and then they were airborne. 

The Skyranger was as a typical military transport built more for reliability than comfort, he had flown in military transport planes before so this wasn't something he was unused to. It would be about an hour before they reached their target.

There was no chatter. Just a tense atmosphere, nobody was looking forward to this. Everyone had the feeling that somebody wouldn't be coming back and it may well be them. That was not the sort of atmosphere a combat unit should have.

He leaned over to the person next to him who happened to be al-Ansab.

"You guys are aware that having the sort of attitude this team seems to have is a quick way to have even more casualties right?" Okay it was a stupid way to ask, but it got the point across

"Maybe so, but it's easier to say than to do." The tone was matter of fact, but he didn't like the words.

"Hey I'm managing it even though I'm expecting the aliens to be lovechildren of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Predator given how you guys are reacting." Al-Asnab had clearly seen that movie as he started coughing which exploded into full-blown laughter. 

"You did at least bring the right attitude for the job I hear. Provided you can fight as well I think you'll last as long as any trooper."

"Um... Thanks." 

He felt the pitch in engine tune before the signal over the radio bead that they were approaching their target zone.

"Well. Here goes." He got himself ready to get up and move out. Having deliberately taken a seat near the door he'd be the first one out to get a view on conditions on the ground, as he'd been taught back in the army.

He liked the ideal that implied; that the officers should be the first to fight.

The craft landed with a thump and the hatch dropped quickly down. He got up and darted down the ramp into the nearest concealment he could see and put his FAL to the shoulder to look for hostiles.

Nothing he could see in the darkness of the night. The rest of the squad fanned out and set up positions around the skyranger ramp.

Suddenly his radio crackled.

"I recommend you take Al-Ansab, Beronvic and Morgensen and sweep the area for hostiles." The sergeant again.

"All right. You'll handle the UFO then?"

"Of course I'll handle the UFO rookie. What are you? Bloody deaf?"

Egon grinned.

"Keep this up and I'll recommend you for a commission you know."

Sudden silence answered him and then.

"You wouldn't dare!" The tone was so acidic it could make a hole straight through a tank.

Egon just grinned like a maniac as he signaled his element of the squad to move out.

"Where are the civilians? Do we have to worry about hostages?"

"Negative. The aliens seem to minimize witnesses. The old fashioned way."

Egon's grin died instantly at that comment. He retained his focus though.

"Well then it's time to show them how we feel about that eh?"

"If you say so sir."

They moved forward slowly trying to make themselves harder to see in the darkness. 

There was complete silence. Egon wished they were able to use night goggles, but it seemed alien energy weapons fire interfered with them and effectively made them useless if you looked in the general direction of plasma fire. This meant that only more old fashioned tools like the MK1 eyeball would work. They had flares for this, but of course he had forgotten to pick some up from the armory before they left.

They had almost completed their sweep and were walking through some dense bushes when it happened.

Suddenly there was a flash of green and what looked like a green beam lasting just the briefest of instances slashed from the opening to a barn out and hit Morgensen in the chest dropping him like a smoking sack of potatoes. Simultaneously green flashes came from the direction of the UFO.

"Morgensen is down!"

"Archer is down!"

"They are everywhere! Oh god we're all going to die!"

"Cut the chatter and get some flares in their direction!"

"Roger."

Egon aimed at what appeared to be the origin point of the green beam and fired off a few shots. Berovic tossed a flare. Suddenly he could see the little bastard.

"Tango spotted!"

It was a grey. Just like those so popular in fiction it was a big headed small grey man with big black eyes. It squeezed off another shot, this one blowing up some bushes next to him.

Right then he didn't care where it was from. Just that it was going to die.

Egon and Al-Ansab opened fire simultaneously hitting him repeatedly. But it didn't seem to do anything even as they saw small splatters of a dark liquid from his body. It raised the weapon to fire again before suddenly collapsed. One of the dozen or so bullets that had hit it had finally hit something vital.

"Tango down!"

"Oh Godohgodohgod."

"Matthews come back here!"

More green flashes came from over at the UFO. Egon though he saw a profile in that direction in the flash through a window. It was roughly humanoid with a large head.

"Matthews is down!"

Egon got up and rushed forward to get out of the bushes then dropped to his knees. This would be a difficult shot under night conditions. 

"Captain what are you doing?"

He didn't reply. He squeezed off four shots in rapid succession shots and was rewarded with an alien cry.

"Tango down. Who got him?"

"Olsen I think."

"Good shooting then. We're preparing to enter the UFO."

Egon felt rather than saw the rest of his fire team taking positions around him.

"There's usually not much more than a few on these crash sites. We should be almost done now." Al-Ansab said from behind him.

"Entering the UFO now. There's a lot of smoke and I can't see anything." Suddenly the noise of one of the aliens energy weapons, then several rifle shots.

"Volkov is down. Tango is down."

"Any tangos left?"

"Unknown, be on your guard."

"Tango! AAARGH!" Suddenly a plasma weapon fired from behind him.

He spun around as best he could from his kneeling position and saw one of the greys having somehow snuck up behind them to virtually point blank and just blown Berovic away.

Before he could do anything the alien also shot Al-Ansab. The plasma bolt vaporizing a large part of his chest.

The alien started turning towards him and instincts took over.

The other thing apart from his ability to read people Egon was proud of was his personal combat skills. He was damn fast and damn hard to hit.

Just as the alien started squeezing the trigger Egon threw himself flat on his back and brought to FAL up to across his chest roughly at his right shoulder and fired repeatedly into the alien.

The position was awkward and uncomfortable and actually hitting something beyond point blank was near impossible.

Thankfully the alien was point blank.

It took several hits to its chest that knocked it back, but didn't knock it down, then Egon flipped his thumb up to the fire selector, flipped it down to auto and fired all that remained in his magazine into the alien's big head. Near impossible to keep on target it still hit it enough to take it down for good.

"What's happening over there? Anyone alive? Report?"

Egon brought his breathing under control.

"This is Captain Olsen, Berovic is down, Al-Ansab is down, Tango is down."

There was silence when he realized what that meant.

Everyone but him and the sergeant was down. And given how destructive the alien weapons were they were probably dead.

Virtually the entire squad had been wiped out in one mission.

"I see. Hold your position and I'll link up with you to do a final sweep. I think we got them all though."

oOoOoOoOoOo 

The mess hall was quiet. Theoretically they should have just gone back to bed and written a report in the morning

James didn't feel like abandoning his commanding officer yet though. The young captain had done a very good account of himself out there, but on paper the team was his responsibility. And the older sergeant was rapidly becoming aware that the captain took responsibility seriously.

Captain Olsen was sitting there with his head face down on the table. It looked slightly comical, but it was the sign of him taking it as complete defeat.

"Look kid. There was nothing you could have done out there. Night fights are hell. And this isn't the first such disastrous mission. And it won't be the last."

No response.

"This was my third mission, and while it was the worst one yet, we lost four guys the last mission and five guys the mission before that."

The officer lifted his head and stared at him.

"You'll have to get used to this. X-com is the most dangerous combat assignment anywhere on earth right now. You will lose most the men you lead in a matter of weeks." The young officer looked like he needed some encouragement, shame he couldn't think of any to give him. It just was too dark a situation to offer anything but consolation.

"I refuse to accept that." That statement was quiet, but you could feel the steel under that statement. Either the captain was made of sterner stuff than he thought or he was cracking already.

"This slaughterhouse situation is going to end. We're not going to sit here and take this crap from those ET bastards." The officer pulled something out of his pocket and slammed it onto the table.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?"

It was the leaflet somebody had printed up to introduce newcomers to the base. And right now it was laid down open on the map of the facility.

"I'm the most dangerous damn thing on the battlefield. I'm a Junior Officer with a map and an idea and I'm about to act on it."

For the first time in his life James was left utterly speechless.

oOoOoOoOoOo 

"Next time on X-com. First to fight"

"This idea is insane." James said.

"Hey if you have any better ideas I'd love to hear them. In the meantime we're going to try this because just going on as we are is unacceptable." Captain Olsen said.

"You can't seriously believe this will work."

"Quite possibly not, but it can't make things worse. And if it doesn't and I survive we try something else. And we'll keep trying new things until we either die or we find something that works. Is that clear sergeant!"

It was rapidly becoming clear that James had underestimated the captain quite a bit.

"We usually don't allow advance payments here. Just what do you intend to use the money for?" The base commander asked Egon

"Training equipment that I don't believe I'll be allowed to requisition." Egon said with a grin.

"Just why wouldn't it be allowed."

"Because it's too unconventional sir."

"Do I want to know?"

"No sir you don't."

The pilot burst into the mess hall.

"Who the HELL painted my Interceptor pink!"

"Die ET bastards!" He yelled as the torrent of HE shells from his autocannon rapidly reduced the small farmhouse to cinders and the alien that had been laying in ambush within it to pulpy green bits.

X-com First to fight: A Map and an idea.


	2. Episode 2: A map and an idea

Two officers sat in silence. 

"So what is this idea of yours?" The Sergeant finally recovered enough to ask.

"Well. Obviously we need to break the mold. Conventional tricks have been tried. Special Forces tried and failed, and regular infantry with CQC training do an acceptable job with somewhat higher losses, but are so much cheaper. That about sums it up?" Captain Olsen had a grin on his face now. For now at least he was able to distract himself from the grievous losses earlier that evening

"Well yes, and?"

"I'm not a great tactician so I can't find some brilliant way to outfight the aliens on the field. Unconventional tactics need to come from the troops. So what we need is a quick way to inspire camaraderie, teamwork, planning, overall skills and originality. We're not fighting humans here so approaches to fight humans may not be the best choices."

"Okay. And just how do you intend to do that." The sergeant felt a sinking feeling and suspected he really didn't want to know.

"We are going to make pulling pranks an official training regimen."

For the second time in less than ten minutes he was totally stunned.

It took him almost a minute before he could speak again.

"You are joking right?"

Olsen merely grinned wider

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

X-com: First to fight

Episode 2: A map and an idea.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"This idea is insane." James said.

"Hey if you have any better ideas I'd love to hear them. In the meantime we're going to try this because just going on as we are is unacceptable." Captain Olsen said.

"You can't seriously believe this will work."

"Quite possibly not, but it can't make things worse. And if it doesn't and I survive we try something else. And we'll keep trying new things until we either die or we find something that works. Is that clear sergeant?!"

It was rapidly becoming clear that James had underestimated the captain quite a bit. He had a determination that hadn't been obvious before now.

"Look. I don't like this idea, but you are the ranking officer so I'll go along with it. Just how do you intend to get permission to do it anyway."

"Easy. I won't ask."

James considered. And well that was the logical approach. If it didn't help it'd be discontinued and it'd just be a brief pranking spree by some over eager soldiers in the higher ups eyes. If it did work however by the time they'd notice it was more than that he'd be able to put hard results on the table and ensure no real repercussions through that. And he was the last person who could argue about procedure and respect on this base.

Still it was so utterly unprofessional.

"Okay, you are the captain, but I refuse to do anything about it until we've both had some sleep. Hopefully that'll change your mind about this."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

Egon stood before the base commander getting some new marching orders.

"As your team took a lot of casualties, which I do agree with sergeant Coburn was unavoidable in the situation. No intercepts will be attempted until you have received some reinforcements and we've had time to give them some training."

"Understood sir."

"A question before you leave captain. Can you handle the job? We're taking losses at a rate not seen for several wars and your record do state that you haven't seen any action or even that high stress duty before you came here. It's bad enough for the grunts, but the officer with the responsibility an immense pressure. We lost one of our previous field commanders to suicide."

"I'm here to do a job and I'll do it sir. And somebody needs to show these aliens that they can't just run roughshod over us even if we're primitive. Besides I have a few ideas that might turn things around." Egon replied. 

"Such as?"

"I'd like to keep that as a surprise for now." Egon was again wearing what would soon become considered his trademark grin.

"Okay do it your way. Good job out there by the way."

"Thank you sir." Egon disagreed, but politeness didn't hurt.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

Egon preferred working in the mess hall he found. He preferred being around people to being alone. Right now he was reading over personnel and inventory. 

"Glad to see you on top of your duties here. Please tell me you've abandoned the idea."

"Sorry Sergeant Cockburn I've not even considered abandoning it."

Sergeant James Cockburn's face darkened.

"That's pronounced Coburn."

"Well its written Cockburn. No wonder you don't wear a nametag."

"Don't call me Cockburn again."

"You say something sergeant Cockburn I wasn't listening?"

"I'll kill you."

"Commission." James said with a grin.

"You are the worst Captain I've served under."

"Hey I'll do you a favor and not mention this to anyone if you do me a favor and help keep every Norwegian produced movie that might come along out of this base."

"Why do you want that?"

"Let's just say you aren't the only one whose name has made him a mockery target and there are certain movies I fear getting into wide distribution around here."

"And in return you'll never call me Cockburn again nor let anyone know about that?"

"Affirmative. But if even one of those movies shows up around here the deal is off."

"We have a deal."

"Right. I need to ask some question. Like what is the MP-AC listed here in the armory inventory. A missile launcher of sorts?"

"I don't know. The previous commander didn't use anything like that. Perhaps we should get down to the armory and check."

"Might as well. Not much more to do until we get some troopers over here."

The armory was a small parts of general storage. It was just one that had an officer on watch at all times and more secure locks on its equipment.

The young man came to attention as the command crew (And only crew right now) of the combat team entered the armory.

"At ease soldier. We're just here to check out some gear we didn't recognize from the inventory."

"And what would that be?"

"The MP-AC and MP-HC. We've never heard of those before."

"Not surprised. They aren't very widely used. But they are totally sweet."

"Right. Lead the way, whatever rank you are as I can't see any rank bars." 

"Call me corporal. That's the rank I had in my last posting."

"All right corporal. Oh and while I'm down here I'd like to exchange my FAL for one of the G3s you have down here according to the inventory. I just feel comfortable with one of those."

"Okay sir. We'll do that afterwards."

They reached a locker marked 'Experimental' that took the corporal a moment to unlock.

"This here is the MP-HC, or the man portable heavy cannon."

"Whoa." Egon said.

"That's a big gun." Was what James said.

It was long and roughly tubular with an unusual shaped mechanism at the end and a clip. It had a barrel it felt like you could put your fist into. He didn't think anything hit by this one could get back up.

"Real nifty. Complete with Armor Piercing, High Explosive and Incendiary rounds, carries a 6 round clip. We have two of these. Can order more but they are custom built so may take some time to deliver."

"I think that our previous team leader shafted us in the support weapons category. All we had was a machine gun."

"Yeah he was the one who had it locked up just before you arrived I think" He gestured to James.

"Why did he do that?" Egon couldn't see how anyone would turn down the sort of firepower this thing probably had against an enemy as tough as the aliens.

"He didn't trust the reliability being experimental weapons and all. And they do have a nasty tendency to jam."

"Stupid decision if you ask me. I'll have these reinstated for sure."

"And this:" The corporal reached deeper into the locker in a melodramatic act.

"Is the Man Portable Auto Cannon."

"Oh my god..."

"I think I'm in love."

The previous gun had a wider barrel. That was all it had going for it. This weapon was just a rotary 20mm cannon meant for a single person to carry. It was the nastiest looking gun either of them had ever seen.

"Has the same ammo selection as the Heavy Cannon. This gun can level a small house in one burst."

"Got a firing range rated for explosives?"

The Corporal just smiled. He loved it when he got to fire off the bigger guns down here.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

An office worker intending to squeeze in a few rounds with a handgun heard manic laughter as he entered the firing range and saw two troopers and the guy in charge of the armory firing away like crazy with the biggest most dangerous looking gun he had ever seen.

"It's heavy as hell, but damn it's the most awesome weapon I've ever fired." Egon commented.

"I probably don't have to ask but we're reinstating these weapons as support weapons right."

"I'll refrain from answering as I can't find a way to yell hell yeah while retaining my dignity. Of course there is the issue of reliability to deal with. They won't explode or anything?"

"No they'll just jam and the weight makes it rather cumbersome to unjam."

"I can live with that."

"Me too."

"Next time ET is going to get a nasty surprise."

"I can't believe I'm actually looking forward to a mission."

"We better requisition a lot of HE ammo."

"Of course."

"We should find out if there's some rocket launchers down here too.

"Absolutely."

"Glad to have an agreeable sergeant."

"After being shot at by plasma guns the only thing you know for sure is that more firepower equals good."

"You do know that you've now totally lost your image as an up stuck sergeant in my eyes for good."

"Crap."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

Finally they were receiving more troops. Egon was running out of things he could prepare without them. Receiving six soldiers who none of them knew what they were walking into. He had only received their files this morning as they were rushed in to get X-com back up to par. He heard they were recruiting more to give him more reserve to work with. He hoped he'd be able to work without using it.

If he could get through the rest of this war without a single casualty he'd be happy. Yes war. In his mind it was a war now. And he'd do his damnest to win it

The troopers would arrive in one batch as far as he understood it. They'd first go to the commanders office for the introductory briefing, and then be handed over to him. He intended to be there to receive them personally (Not that he really had anyone else to send after them) immediately afterwards.

He didn't understand why the commander tortured himself by personally meeting every new trooper that likely would die fast. Okay that was a lie. He did understand how it would feel to have a duty to them.

Just like he had a duty to Al-Ansad, Matthews, Volkov and the rest of the ones who had died under his theoretical command.

They were received as a group. He wondered how they took it, but decided to leave it be. Best let the commander to this to face his duty to those he felt he owed to tell personally what they were going into.

The door opened and the rookies filed out.

He and James Cockburn (He'd never be able to think of his full name without resisting a snicker) stood waiting.

"Welcome newcomers. I'm sure you have a lot to absorb so let's head down to friendlier pastures for the introductions."

The mess hall was rapidly becoming his favorite place on this base. People tend to be at least content while eating, and at risk of sounding hippie he liked being surrounded by positive emotions and well for lack of better words vibes.

"I'm Captain Egon Olsen formerly of the Norwegian army. I'm the commander of this unit. As I suspect you too did I signed up without any idea what the hell I was getting into, but I intend to make the best out of the current situation." He gestured towards Sergeant Cockburn.

"This stony face here is Sergeant James Coburn. British..."

"English." James corrected.

"Okay English, and the second in command. Your turn" He gestured to one of the now seated troopers. Let them do it in their own words. He could learn a lot from that.

"I'm Steven Gough, formerly of the Royal Welsh Regiment. I don't really have much more to say than that right now." Young, a bit unsure, reminded him of Matthews, he suspected that he'd respond well to the new training regime.

"Jessica Hawkins, US Air force Pararescue. I won't let you down sir." He still was baffled at getting a Pararescue. Those guys were well trained and honestly wasted in this unit. But apparently she'd applied back while they had tried special forces, but reapplied after they stopped trying to use them. She had some personal reason for being here. Either she needed money or she had some prior history with the aliens. He suspected the first. Still if she was Pararescue her competence was not in question. Being highly professional would probably be the worst disposed to his ideas.

"Jean Despereaux, I'm French and I'm here to kill aliens. There have been some rumors after all." This one gave him the vibes that he was slightly psycho, still if it was directed to the aliens instead of humans that'd be a good thing. Despite the initial assessment he had hopes for this guy though he couldn't figure out why.

"Marcus Fenix, Grenadan. Signed up for the pay." He tried too hard to be the hard soldier type. He needed close watching to be sure of him.

"Sharif Patel from India. I think this'll be an interesting deployment." A friendly fellow, he also suspected he'd enjoy the pranking more than strictly necessary. Something Egon could live with.

"That leaves me last then? Well I'm Eric Lockheart from Canada. And... I can't think of anything more to say." While he seemed insecure he had a good feeling about this one. Someone who'd adapt well.

"Great. Then you can go change into uniforms and meet me at the armory for issuing weaponry. We have some new toys we'd like to field test and we need to find the lucky volunteers."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

Taking a page from the corporal's melodrama they had set up a table and covered the weapons under a piece of cloth.

As the last trooper arrived they made their move.

"Glad you could make it, well time to introduce the support weapons." He revealed the weapons with a flourish and watched their faces.

Certainly an experience he'd like to repeat.

"What the hell are those?"

"X-com's best personal support weaponry, given some previous field experiences me and Sarge have decided on a larger than usual heavy weapons group, which does mean we'll be using all of these. Yes that means the Heavy Cannons, the Auto Cannons and the missile launcher here, usually loaded with HE, but other ammunition will be available on demand. They are rather heavy, so I won't recommend you try without some strength training. I know I don't lift enough weights to handle these in the field so if we don't have enough weight lifters we'll have to leave some behind"

"I'm taking the autocannon though." Sergeant Cockburn (Snicker) interjected to the disappointment to a couple of troopers.

"Those of you that don't want any or get any will have to make do with the FN FAL. Our standard rifle."

"Why not a 5.56 weapon like the M4?" Hawkins asked. Special Forces tended not to use the heaviest weapons available.

"Because those are utterly insufficient for the job and FALs are barely sufficient. Trust me the ETs are harder to get rid off than a bad soap opera."

"Ah."

"I'll let you people work out who'll carry what on your own. Report back to me in the mess hall when you are done and we'll give you our training regimen."

Every one of the rookies wondered why their sergeant shifted uncomfortably when Egon mentioned training.

"Oh and no fistfights, anyone who resorts to violence doesn't get to use a heavy weapon."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"You have to be joking!" The Pararescue woman was as expected the most resistant to the idea.

"No joking. A thorough analysis of field experiences shows that this is the best training method we can find that may work on short notice."

"Now you are just bullshitting us." She continued.

"Is that a way to talk to your commanding officer?"He said with his characteristic grin

"But even so while yeah there wasn't any analysis field experience does indicate we need some sort of training that gives quick way to inspire camaraderie, teamwork, planning, overall skills and originality. And guess what qualifies." His grin widened.

"And just how are we supposed to do this?"

"Simple. You guys come up with something you feel is worth doing. Run it by the group who'll nay it if it's too harmful, and if it isn't we work out how to do it while I procure the necessary materials to execute it. And then we plan and execute it as a group."

"What do you define as too harmful?" Desperaux asked.

"Anything that'll cause actual bodily harm or which will reduce the base's ability to operate and can't be undone fairly quickly. Everything else you can think of is free game. Anyone have any ideas?"

"Um... I may have one." Eric Lockheart interjected.

"Let's hear it."

"We're going to need a lot of duct tape, and I mean a lot."

"Right. I'll get right on acquiring it then. You guys work out a plan and tell me when I get back." Egon stood up and headed for the commander's office.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"Ah Olsen what can I do for you?"

"Afternoon commander. I'm here to ask for an advance payment for my paycheck."

"We don't usually allow for advanced payments here, what do you need the money for?"

"Training equipment. Some tools I don't think I'll be allowed to requisition?"

"Just why wouldn't it be allowed?"

"Because it's too unconventional sir."

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably not." Egon said with his grin.

"Will anyone be hurt by it?"

"Not if I can help it."

Suddenly the commander looked a lot wearier and older.

"Will it reduce losses?"

"I wouldn't be trying it if I didn't think so."

"In that case your request is approved. I'll have it expedited post haste."

"Pleasure doing business with you sir. I take it I'm dismissed?"

"Dismissed Captain. And good luck."

"Thank you sir. See you later."

Egon was whistling as he left that office.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"The duct tape will be here by tomorrow. What's your plan?"

"Well you see..."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

The office worker was having a bad day. He'd run out of coffee, his alarm clock hadn't gone off so he had to forego a shower. It was about to get worse.

As he entered his office he noticed something was amiss.

His desks, his chair, his filing cabinet, none of these were in the place they should be.

He looked up. There in a perfect upside down version of his office was the furniture. All of them duct taped to the ceiling.

All along the office block this scene was repeating itself. In the first office that wasn't upside down there was a small computer written note.

'Sorry we didn't get them all, but we ran out of duct tape.'

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"Right. That went well. Any more ideas?" Egon managed to get out after they stopped laughing.

"Well we could..." Patel started with a small smile.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

The young mechanic woke up and immediately knew something was wrong. The bed smelled wrong.

He sat up, it took him a moment, but he realized this was the room of this section's females. How the hell did he get here.

He jumped out of bed making a lot more noise than he expected waking up the rest of the room.

His mates from his room were all there. Some of them making less than dignified noises when they realized their situation.

"We're all here. Wait if we're here. Where's the women who were supposed to be here?"

A singular short shriek from down the hall gave a good indicator of that.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"I can't believe we moved half the people on this base around in their sleep and didn't wake anyone."

"Nice idea, this one can stand some repetition. Perhaps we should try for something extra spectacular this time around?" Egon asked hoping to inspire them.

"Like what?"

"I have an idea." Jessica Hawkins had gotten more into it after the duct tape prank. 

"What's the idea?"

"Well we're going to need a lot of pink paint and a way to get it on fast..."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

The mess hall was wild with speculations. The sudden wave of pranks had everybody a bit on the edge. Who did it? What is the next target? How do we get even? Those were the standard speculations.

Then suddenly the door burst open and a pilot rushed into the mess hall.

"Who the hell are the jokers who painted my interceptor pink!"

Everyone sat up and looked at him.

"Wait what?"

"Somebody broke into the hangar and repainted his fighter." A tech who followed behind him clarified.

"Oh we GOT to see this." Captain Egon Olsen feigning innocence like an expert stated.

"C'mon guys." He said as he got up and headed for the door.

Following the tactical team most the occupants in the mess hall followed to the growing panic of the pilot as he realized most the base was about to take a look on his fighter.

This was of course part of the entire prank.

In the hangar even the staunchest member of the base personnel couldn't resist at least snickering.

The interceptor was painted in pink all right. And the Yellow and Red Xs that usually adorned the wings and tailfin had been replaced with hello kitty faces.

A few of the people ran off to find cameras. Egon of course just happened to be carrying one around then and set about snapping pictures.

This was one for the record books.

"Hey stop staring! Go away! Don't take any pictures" The pilot tried desperately to shoo the people away with little success.

Suddenly the intercom crackled.

"Interceptor team prepare for launch."

The pilot looked even more mortified. He'd have to launch looking like that!?

The rest of the group suddenly didn't look so cheery anymore. 

"We should get to the skyranger Captain. If it's not too far away we got better odds of getting there before nightfall and I'd rather not fight another night battle if they manage to intercept it." Sarge said.

"Excellent suggestion, all right team we'll load up into the skyranger and launch. Make sure you got all your gear."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

The UFO was a replacement for the last UFO they shot down, a scout for an abductor mission. Having lost a smaller ship they now sent a large scout to attempt to finish the job.

It picked up what might be a hostile somewhere behind it, but it didn't matter. It wouldn't be able to reach it before it landed. And those fighters couldn't stay on station for long. They'd be finished before they could get a second fighter there and then just go full power early.

The pilot of the Pink Interceptor which of course was the only one able to launch cursed.

"Control, the UFO just landed and I have no weapons able to hit a grounded target."

"Confirmed Interceptor Pink, I mean Interceptor 2. We have a strike team enroute as we speak to hit it on the ground."

Okay the primary suspects of the repaint were the combat team, but even he wouldn't wish for them to engage a full strength Alien UFO on the ground like that. They had lost full teams doing that sort of thing.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"Okay we're about to engage a landed UFO . There isn't a lot of experience with such a thing so I'd like to ask for ideas how to deal with this. A general brainstorm before we reach it." Now it was time to see if this paid off.

"What sort of environment are we fighting in?" Hawkins asked

"As far as I can tell it's a farm. Unfortunately we don't have exact maps of the area and will be going in fairly blind."

"What about the farmers? What happened to them?" Gough asked

"If the aliens keep their SOP they'll all be dead by the time we land."

"So essentially nothing stops us from hitting all possible hiding spots with a torrent of heavy weapons fire?" Desperaux asked.

"Not really. I'd say that is a viable operations plan."

"We'll have to storm the UFO right? Anything volatile inside?"

"Quite a lot of things command doesn't want destroyed unfortunately. Still if it comes down to blowing valuable shit up and one of your lives I say we give them a double helping of HE."

There were grins at that.

"So we basically go down there. Blow up every hiding spot, kill anything not hiding, and then take the UFO?"

"That's about it." They had just thrown together an ops plan for him without realizing it. It wasn't a brilliant one, but it'd give a solid core to adapt from.

"We're approaching the LZ and almost ready to touchdown stand by." Came the voice from the cockpit. It occurred to Egon that he didn't know the pilot and that he'd have to do something about that soon.

He took a view of the equipment his squad carried. In the end the missile launcher had been left behind.

The sergeant carried the unreliable autocannon, Patel and Lockheart carried heavy cannons. They had been fully trained in how to use them in the field and to unjam them if it came to that. But in general they wouldn't be exposed to that much enemy fire until after they had already killed anything that might engage them from there.

The engine tune changed as they hovered, and then there was the thump of touchdown and the ramp dropped.

"Go!"

As per usual he was the first one off the ramp. They had landed in a field a bit from a couple of small buildings and a large bushy garden.

He could swear he saw movement in the second floor of one of the houses. "Tango, House 11 'o clock."

"I'll take care of it." Sarge replied as he stopped at the foot of the ramp. He wasn't intending to be a heavy weapons as standard, but just once he wished to make the aliens feel like he felt when he was up against their overwhelming firepower and his teammates dying all around him. So he had requested to use the auto-cannon for the first mission in a while.

"Die ET bastards!" He yelled as the torrent of HE shells from his autocannon rapidly reduced the small farmhouse to cinders and the alien that had been laying in ambush within it to pulpy green bits.

"Tango down!" This was remarkably therapeutic.

"Sir shouldn't we hit the other one for good measure. Just to be safe I mean."

"Might as well." Egon conceded.

"Go ahead and fire on it. And anything else we'd have a hard time seeing somebody hide."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

Sectoids couldn't really feel fear anymore. They had forcefully through genetic alterations erased most emotions to be more efficient. The closest they could handle was worried.

And now they were worried as hell. The interlopers had arrived as per usual. Unlike usual however they seemed far more aggressive as well as far more destructive. As they watched another pair of eyes blacked out. This one without actually seeing the enemy that killed it as it ran to get out of the hedges it'd hidden within to impede the enemy's movement.

It was brutally simple, but oh so effective. It would not be possible to stop them short of their ship and if they used the same firepower within the ship they could utterly wreck it. The logical response was to retreat.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"Combat team. This is Control. Some of the thermal readings we're getting from the orbiting Interceptor indicates that the UFO is powering its engines. Recommend you fall back to the Skyranger and let the Interceptor take it down as it tries to flee. Any crew left outside should be easy pickings as they try to enter the ship."

"Roger that control. Relaying to troops now." Egon was happy at letting them go straight into the arms of the waiting Interceptor. It meant that for once they had managed to utterly scare the shit out of the aliens. Now he just had to relay the good news.

"All right men. The aliens are beating a retreat and..."

"What? We can't let them get away!" Fenix dashed towards the UFO. Gough followed after a moment's hesitation.

"... And we're going to let the Interceptor shoot it up a bit before we continue. Ah hell!"

It took just an instant to decide what course of action to take. Even if it might not be tactically wise.

"Cover me! I'll cover them!" He dashed after them cursing every over eager rookie ever born under his breath. 

"Captain what the hell are you doing?!"

"I'm not letting them kill themselves through their own stupidity if I can help it."

There was an all too familiar green flash and Fenix was knocked back with a scream. Gough looked in the direction of the fire and froze.

The alien had been hiding in a field of some crop Egon couldn't identify, and was now taking aim on Gough.

Egon skidded to a halt and hurriedly raised his rifle and fired.

First shot missed, the second nicked the aliens shoulder and ruined it's aim so that the aliens shot missed Gough, before either of them could fire any more shots the crop field was hit by a heavy cannon shell.

"Tango down. Did you SEE how he flew?!" An exited Lockheart transmitted.

"Gough get..." Gough recovered and started charging again intent on seeing it through. If Egon was to guess he was scared, but so afraid of being a coward he forced himself to take insane risks. Right now regular panic would be better.

And now they were so close to the UFO they might as well.

Gough reached the UFO door and was about to perform X-com rookie mistake number 1 when Egon reached the UFO and through the expedient of letting the hull of the UFO absorb his momentum , or rather as Sarge would later put it couldn't be arsed to bloody slow down and slammed into it to save time, stopped right next to the door.

He grabbed Gough and yanked him aside just as the door opened and the pair aliens inside opened fire.

Thanks to the yank Gough wasn't directly in the line of the plasma fire and it only grazed the Rookie. He still screamed and collapsed though.

Egon fired one handed into the UFO at the one alien he could see of the pair scoring a lucky shot at the alien's hand forcing him to drop his weapon. He barely registered that Desperaux who had apparently followed him reached the UFO door on the other side opened fire and being able to aim properly dropped his foe easily.

The alien scrambled for his weapon, but now Egon had time to properly support his G3 and fired a couple of shots into its large head sending it to the floor in a heap.

"Two tangos down, Gough is injured. Hawkins get over here and help him. We're going in."

"Wait what?! Captain stop!"

"Not an option." He understood that this close they couldn't move anyone that wounded quickly. So they'd be exposed to fire from the UFO the entire fall back. Not a call he would make.

Of course he did fail to consider that with the door guard down and the engine powering up they'd probably not bother. And they could just move to the side where the aliens would have to leave the UFO and be exposed to fire from the X-com team. Well nobody ever claimed Egon was a tactical genius. Still he'd be hearing that from his sergeant afterwards.

"Let's go."

He and Desperaux moved in simultaneously, saw the door on either side and with a nod split up. Egon took left.

He had a good feel how fast Desperaux would move and tried to go through the door at the same moment, but as he stepped through he saw another door immediately afterwards, he rushed through that one too to see an alien turning towards the direction of the other door raising his weapon.

Two well placed shots from Egon stopped that move. And a second alien that turned towards him was dropped by Desperaux from the other side.

"Tango down."

"Tango down."

They entered what was apparently their control room and saw that there was just one door left into what they were pretty sure was the power plant.

"Only one room left. Any way we can open this door without exposing ourselves to fire?"

"The doors seem to open in combination to well intent to open and a large body approaching." Egon replied. The doors didn't make much sense. No control panel or anything. They just registered you wanted in somehow and then opened. If you didn't want to enter it didn't open. And unless you approached head on it wouldn't. It made opening it without exposing yourself to fire a real bitch.

"Does it have to be the same body approaching as the one with the intent?"

"I don't know."

Desperaux looked down on the sectoid corpses in the room.

"I like the way you think soldier. Worst that can happen is some green splatter on the door." Egon grinned and grabbed one of the arms of the Sectoid corpse.

They swung it towards the door both intensely wanting it to open. And it opened up.

It didn't swing up because the trick had worked however. They just had the dumb luck to have an alien try to leave the room at that moment and got a faceful of alien corpse knocking him back.

A plasma bolt streaked out the door from further in the engine room.

Desperaux and Egon both pulled a grenade from their harness and threw it in both having decided on the same idea at the same time.

Both threw in an incendiary grenade. The door closed just as they exploded and coated the room in liquid flame. 

They stood back covering the door.

It opened and the alien on fire that tried to leave got a lethal injection of 7.62 NATO. The second one on fire further in got his own dose. 

"This is Captain Olsen. UFO secure.

"You are bloody insane captain."

"You should show some respect you know sarge." Egon said with a grin that was clearly audible over the radio.

"Or what?"

"Or commission." This statement was followed by a lot of grumbling.

"Hey you walked into that one. Anyway sweep the area and make sure we got them all."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"Will he be okay?" Captain Olsen asked

"He'll live." Jessica Hawkins looked around and noticed nobody were near enough to hear them if they didn't use radios and decided to let the Captain have it.

"This mission was a mess. Poor coherency, poor discipline and preparation. I'm holding you responsible for Fenix's death and intend to report that to the commander when we get back." She had expected more from this unit, but apparently it wasn't anywhere near an elite unit.

Captain Olsen closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. So he might regret it, that wasn't an excuse for a military officer.

"I might as well tell you now. I didn't give you people the full facts before to avoid killing morale even though I was scared that it'd backfire as it did."

"The full facts?"

"The casualty reports; while you may have figured there was a bad turnover. To date there had been no mission where there were less than three fatalities, no cases where the aliens lost more than the humans, and no case where an outnumbered human team took on a superior numbered force of aliens and won. Today we did all three. And before you ask this is just my second mission and the first one I can't honestly say I was actually in command."

She was metaphorically speaking knocked reeling by this.

"What?"

"Yes his death was my fault. I'm in charge so every one of you is my responsibility, and I agree I messed up here, but in all honesty it could have been a lot worse." He turned and left at that.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Sarge are we ready to liftoff." He pushed the memory of Fenix taking a plasma bolt to the chest aside and got back on his job.

"We're ready. X-com cleanup crews are on the way. And next time try to let somebody else storm the UFO okay? It'd be a really stupid way to lose a commander."

"So how did the mission go in your estimate?"

"I agree with Hawkins that Fenix died because we screwed up and didn't tell them clearly enough just how dangerous our enemy was, but the rest of them are alive because in the end we did something right. Hopefully we can fix what went wrong without losing what went right."

"So you were listening."

"A true sergeant has ears everywhere."

"Glad to hear that."

"I have to wonder though. How will the aliens react if we can keep this up?"

"I'd rather not think about that just now. It can wait until morning."

"I'd certainly hope so. And Captain."

"Yes?"

"You did better than I expected."

"I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not."

"That's the whole point." For once Egon faced his own grin on someone else's face. This of course led to him matching it with one of his own.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

Next time on X-com: First to fight.

"The aliens scout patterns are different. They are going much closer to urban areas than we've ever seen before." The intelligence analyst said.

"Well whatever the reason I'm feeling much safer we can handle it now." The commander retorted fully sober as a result of the recent streak of successes.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"Look at the size of that thing."

"Stop quoting Star Wars and engage."

"Roger that. Interceptor 1 engaging. Interceptor 2 Hang back and stand by to assist."

"Affirmative."

"Closing to firing range. HOLY SHIT!" There was a bright green flash and the Interceptor blew apart.

"This is Interceptor 2. Interceptor 1 is gone! I say again gone!"

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"The aliens are killing everything in their path. Nothing we send at them appears to even slow them." 

"Call for X-com."

"Sir?"

"It's their job. They are the ones supposedly equipped to handle this sort of thing."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo 

"What the hell is that?" Patil asked as they peered around the corner.

"I have no idea. Looks like some sort of miniature UFO. Watch out!" Egon yelled as the disk shaped thing opened fire and intense plasma fire tore up the walls around them.

X-com First to fight: Terror in Berlin


	3. Episode 3: Terror in Berlin

'Things are looking up.' Egon thought as he laid down fire against a lone Alien who had run out of a house just before the autocannon did its thing to it.

It wasn't the most common of thoughts to have in the middle of the battlefield, but it fit.

This was the fourth intercept since the new team members arrived, and they hadn't taken any losses since Fenix died. Granted they hadn't faced a ship that big, but even so they were just six now until they got reinforcements, or Gough recovered. Still six people got the job done provided they didn't hit a ship as big as the first one.

"Tango down."

The training was paying off. There was no other way to put it. While they didn't fight and move like a regular military unit, and would get their asses kicked against any human opponent. Against this alien opponent it was more than just effective by now. The team could read each other flawlessly and moved together like they were Siamese siblings taken apart.

He took up position next to the door. 

"The Captain's about to do something stupid again." Some voice said over the radio. He couldn't identify the voice right now and he didn't dignify that statement with a reply.

"Hawkins back me up." He switched grip on his G3 and spun around to the door.

Holding his rifle sideways at roughly head height for the aliens with his hands trying to restrain the recoil somewhat he fired letting the recoil carry the rifle over the interior of the smoking UFO. There were three aliens in there and all of them took several hits before they could respond.

His weapon clicked empty and he dived back in cover and started to reload.

"Hawkins finish off the survivors."

The former Para-rescue soldier moved up and fired several single shots into the interior.

"Three Tangos down, UFO wreck secure." She reported.

"If you keep pulling stupid stunts like that you'll get your retirement courtesy of the Darwin Awards" Sarge said.

Egon grinned. 

"Well good job to you too."

Egon turned the rest of his squad.

"Well then people. Let's do a final sweep then pack up and get back to base. Another job well done."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

They were annoyed. An inconvenient number of ships had apparently been successfully attacked on the ground by the humans. 

They weren't quite sure who was fighting back so effectively probably one of their international organizations as they seemed to ignore borders, but they did pinpoint the rough region of Earth where the effective resistance was. It was time to give the humans a demonstration of what it meant to incur their wrath.

They would know terror.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

X-com. First to fight.

Terror in Berlin

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"I was expecting worse with this assignment you know, especially with this sort of pay." Eric Lockheart said between mouthfuls. He and the other three squaddies who weren't hospitalized were eating dinner together. Usually their superiors would join them, but were apparently busy with official business this afternoon.

"Well it does supposedly have immense turnover, but that seems to have turned around by now. Either that or Captain Olsen faked those reports to scare us." Sharif Patel answered.

"Or we're going through a quiet stretch." Jessica Hawkins refused to believe that their captain might just know what he was doing. 

"Not according to those reports. We've actually faced worse opposition than the first teams composed of Special Forces did. Odd as it may seem, we do seem to have the right approach."

"Well excuse me for thinking that pretty much running around like headless chickens tossing tons of high explosives around is an unprofessional approach and as soon as we face real opposition we'll be slaughtered then."

"Hey don't diss the Captain. He's doing fine as far as I'm concerned. And did you see what he did last mission? Just swept the whole room with a battle rifle on full auto." Eric had started to idolize their captain after what he did their first mission to protect one of their own. 

"Aggressive actions don't make up for a failure of leadership."

"If you got a problem you could quit." Sharif interjected

Jessica stiffened.

"Not an option."

"Then quit your whining." The fourth occupant at the table finally spoke. Jean Desperaux wasn't really the silent type, but they wished he was. He could be a bit disturbing if funny. Violent fellow, but mostly just against aliens.

"Hey I'm probably the most qualified to comment."

"Blah blah Para-rescue and all that crap. These ETs aren't going to let you air drop in and save one of them."

"Um... Should we let this spiral out control like this?" Eric asked Sharif.

"I suggest we beat a hasty retreat while we can. This could get violent."

"Ten bucks on Hawkins."

"You're on."

"You were dropped on your head as a baby weren't you?" Jessica was getting angry.

"Did the overglorified combat medic say something?" Jean wasn't far behind.

"This overglorified combat medic is the only one qualified to patch you together in the field. Don't give me any excuses for emergency field amputations. You can't jerk off very well without an arm to do it with."

"Hey cool down people. We're on the same side here. Right?" Eric tried desperately to play peacemaker.

"I wouldn't say that. I'm on the side of competence." Jessica answered rather cooly.

"You forgot an in- there missy."

"That's it. Better pray you never get hurt." Jessica stood up and left the table. Jean just sat there with a self satisfied smirk.

"She's been a lot more moody lately."

"She can't quite accept that my training methods actually work because she's got a very firm image of what it means to be a combat professional, nor that the aliens may be different enough to warrant variances. And she hasn't emotionally understood that if we came at them the same old way we'd all get slaughtered. Oh and she's chafing under my command as I'm awfully junior for the job."

"Captain!" Eric got to attention in a rush.

"How long were you there?" Sharif asked

"Long enough. I was just about to intervene when she ran off. I'd talk to her, but she needs to cool down first. And drop the come to attention all right? I thought it had become pretty clear we're as unconventional as it comes." Captain Olsen had a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Oh right." Eric relaxed.

"Listen, don't push her too hard on this. I'd rather not have the team breaking up from internal fighting. Sure she thinks I'm an idiot, but she follows orders regardless and is very effective in the field. That entitles her to her own opinion as far as I'm concerned. We're all from free countries right now."

"That could backfire on you badly."

"When have I ever taken an action that couldn't backfire badly." Egon said with a grin.

"Well when you put it that way." Eric liked that attitude. He did understand that command meant taking risks.

"Still I'll try to talk to her before it gets any worse. Hopefully I'll be able to prevent a full blown mutiny during a combat mission that gets people killed."

"So you are on top of the situation?"

'I don't think I've truly been on top of the situation since I arrived. It's comparable to be on top of a wild buffalo running between the French and German lines during World War 1 while wearing a giant bullseye and every combatant taking the chance to get some target practice. Still that's not the thing you say in front of the troops.'

"As much as I usually am yes."

"That's good."

"Anyhow I have some duty to take care of. Man successful missions really rack up the paperwork. And if you have any training ideas hold them in for tomorrow. We're getting some reinforcements for the team then and we could let them get some firsthand experience."

"Affirmative."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Sir. You have to see this."

Commander Thornton who was just gone to raid the coffee machine turned around to face one of the intelligence analysts attached to the base.

Officially they were here to help analyze the invaders operations patterns and give them a rough idea what they were trying to achieve. Unofficially he was pretty sure they spied on X-com to see if they discovered anything valuable enough to try to grab them. Like that UFO power source they had recently acquired. The funding nations were clamoring for a look at that one, even though officially they'd never have received any reports about it.

"What can I do for you miss... Beaumount-Wraith?" He asked as he got a look on her nametag.

"There's been a major change in the intruders' operations pattern."

"What sort of change?"

"The intruders scout patterns are different. They are going much closer to urban areas than we've ever seen before." The intelligence analyst said.

"Well whatever the reason I'm feeling much safer we can handle it now." The commander retorted fully sober as a result of the recent streak of successes.

"Sir my section head won't accept my belief without more evidence, but I think they are planning an attack of some sort in retaliation for our actions."

"Why would they do that? They don't need to risk scouts if they can just hit the site from space. It'd be far safer for them and if they did an attack there'd be no way to keep it hidden anyway."

"Why don't humans use nuclear weapons in war indiscriminately? We can't assume they'll operate in the simplest fashion with the most firepower, politics and our ethics interfere with that. Humans don't act like that, so why would they?"

"That's a valid argument. All right I'll tell Olsen to try to train his troops more for urban warfare and give a heads up to the German government that something may be up. The scouts were for the most part over German territory right?"

"Yes sir, and thank you sir. That was all I could expect."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"All right people. We're here to welcome two new teammembers to the fold." Egon was careful to avoid the word rookie. The plan was to make them feel welcome from the word go. He wanted the squad up and integrated as a unit again despite new additions as soon as possible.

"This is Judah Ben-Yaddar from Israel" He gestured to a young man with a stony tanned face. He wasn't too happy about being here. Probably didn't have much choice.

"And this is Yamazaki Sayuri from Japan." He gestured to a smaller looking woman in her late twenties who looked at the group with calm even eyes. Frankly Egon couldn't read her. That made him a bit nervous, but he'd manage.

"Um sir, why are we getting two new people? Isn't Gough still on the squad?" Lockheart asked

"Simple. A Skyranger can take quite a bit more than eight people and I don't see a problem with the squad being a bit overstrenght after he recovers as opposed to understrenght until he recovers."

"Ah of course that makes sense."

"At any rate we follow an unique training regimen. I'm sure you grunts have some ideas for how to introduce our newcomers to it."

Egon's grin was now mirrored on most of his squad. The newcomers both resisted the urge to gulp.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Commander Thornton entered the office block seeing most of the staff wearing what appeared to be painted on clown faces.

Some were still desperately trying to wash off the water resistant special makeup the combat team had put together. Most had resigned themselves to wearing it for several days.

The commander took one more look into the office block.

"It's too early for this shit." And turned around and left.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"What do you mean our uniforms were replaced in the laundry?" An irate junior

"Exactly what I said: Your regular clothes and uniforms disappeared. And in its place there are clown suits."

"Clown suits?!"

"Yup it appears this week's pranks have the theme of clowns."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"What the hell happened to our alien corpses?!"

"You need to ask?"

The less mutilated dead aliens down in the morgue were now dressed up as clowns, and on the wall somebody had written. 'Don't sleep or the clowns will eat you.'

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"All right combat team. Good work out there. See you at dinner."

The control center crew felt the tension flow out of them. The combat team had secured yet another small UFO without losses. Both rookies having come through their own trial by fire.

"This is starting to get routine you know." A junior officer by the name of Thomas Harris remarked.

"Hey rather routine than the bloodbath, besides instead of overfilled morgue we now have to watch over our shoulder for clowns."

"Hang on. I'm getting a contact. UFO moving in from the Atlantic, larger than anything we've seen before, moving faster than anything we've seen before."

"Oh crap."

The officer on watch switched on the intercom.

"Commander we have a new type of UFO heading straight for central Europe. Large and moving fast, should we launch interceptors?"

There was silence from the other end as the information was digested. And a call was made.

"Launch interceptors. If that ship has the mission I think it does we have to try."

"Understood."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"We'll do our best, but frankly I don't think we can catch that thing before it lands."

For once both interceptors got airborne without problems and were racing after the unknown craft at full thrust. 

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Combat team remain on standby. You may have to go out again sooner than expected." The Skyranger had landed less than ten minutes ago and was currently busy refueling as fast as possible.

Egon switched to a private channel.

"Control what is going on?"

"New type of UFO with uncharacteristic behavior. We're trying to figure out what it's doing now. "

"Understood." He turned towards his team.

"I recommend you go get something to eat, but make it something quick. This situation could turn bad fast."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"The target is slowing down. We can catch up and engage it now."

"Interceptor 1 what appears to be its destination."

"It seems to be heading straight for Berlin."

"Stand by Interceptor team."

There was silence from the other end as they contemplated what to do.

"Interceptor Team you have permission to engage. Weapons free."

"Acknowledged, moving to engage."

They approached the UFO and were now close enough to actually get a visual image of it.

"Look at the size of that thing."

"Stop quoting Star Wars and engage."

"Roger that. Interceptor 1 engaging. Interceptor 2 Hang back and stand by to assist."

"Affirmative."

"Closing to firing range. HOLY SHIT!" There was a bright green flash and the Interceptor blew apart.

"This is Interceptor 2. Interceptor 1 is gone! I say again gone!"

"What happened?"

"I don't know. Some sort of energy beam or something just blew him out of the sky."

"Damnit. All right Interceptor 2, follow but do not engage, stay at safe distance and await further orders."

"Understood control, but what the hell are we supposed to do against that?"

"I don't know, but we'll have to think of something."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

The terror ship initiated final approach to its target. The ships lethal cargo was as close to eager as emotionally stunted little grey men and their manufactured killing machines could be.

The Humans needed to be scared into backing off. Or the cost for the Sectoids could be too great in the internal power struggles among the aliens.

The local government had been alerted to their approach and was rallying whatever they could to the site they were setting down on. This was good. Better to show the futility.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

There wasn't time to get any actual military on site, so armed cops would have to do.

The large UFO set down eerily not making more than a slight thump during the entire process.

The cops took up cover around their squad cars and waited to see what happened.

The UFO was about two stories tall in the center section with two pod-like things on the side. Being perfectly smooth there were for the untrained eye no visible doors, albeit a trained observer such as an X-com trooper would see the large doors on the pods. 

Because nobody there knew what to look for they were taken aback when suddenly simultaneously the hatches on both pods opened and some sort of machine hovered out.

It was round and flat. Trace of machinery in a trench running along the middle all the way around it glided out silently.

The cops held their fire unsure how to react to this machine. The machine had no such restrictions.

Suddenly both machines opened up with a torrent of plasma fire shredding through a pair of squad cars killing the people hiding behind them even before the gas being superheated by the plasma passing through it had time to explode.

The cops in panic opened fire in return with a mix of 9mm and 5.56 fire. The disk apparently not even noticing it was under fire just advanced further and two more machines hovered out from within. The hatch even though it was wider than usual was not big enough for more than two machines at a time to leave.

One of the cops firing a semi-automatic 5.56 rifle stiffened. Then with glazed eyes turned around and fired on his partner next to him, then when he dropped turned around and started targeting more of his friends.

Before the cops could start reacting to that in proper things went even more to hell. For reasons unknown the machines had stopped firing as they maneuvered, now they suddenly opened up all four at once raking the entire field in an unmitigated slaughter.

A few tried to run, but they had left it to far too late. All four combined unleashing extremely rapid plasma fire meant that nothing got out of this killing field alive. 

As the machines started fanning out in their wake followed a good sized force of sectoids who in turn split up following the machines.

There would be carnage.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Captain Olsen we have a serious problem." His radio intoned in the voice of Commander Thornton

"What?" Said Egon a bit annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his meal.

"The enemies have landed in Berlin and are as far as we can tell just killing everything they encounter."

Suddenly the meal didn't seem very important at all.

"I'm on my way."

"That may be a problem. Our charter currently bans us from operating inside of urban areas."

"Then screw the charter. People are dying."

"I figured you'd say that. You have permission to take-off and head towards Berlin, but not to land until I can secure permission to that. And Olsen."

"Yes?"

"This won't be like your normal missions. Take whatever steps you feel necessary to win this fight."

"Understood." He switched to the team frequency.

"All troopers meet up in the armory. We have a special mission and we're going to need every bit of firepower we can get our hands on."

A chorus of acknowledgments answered him.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

It was a military office. Not much more needed to be said. The man who resided here was the man who would make the primary call regarding the current attack.

"Are we having any success at stopping them at all?"

"No sir. The GSG-9 moved in as it was clear that the regular police were insufficient, but they've taken massive losses and been forced to withdraw. It'll take some time before we can get any army units in."

"And in the meantime our people die."

"Yes."

"We're losing sight of what matters people." A person in civilian grab said

"The aliens are killing everything in their path. Nothing we throw at them even slow them."

"Call for X-com."

"Sir?"

"It's their job. They are the ones supposedly equipped to handle this sort of thing."

"Just what is X-com?"

"A covert UN run organization intended to handle the alien problem, but before now we didn't think that they were a real threat so they've not received that much support."

"So you want to call in this unit to handle it?"

"They are available. We need every bit of help we can get. And hopefully they might have some experience in stopping these things."

"Yes sir."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Combat team you have authorization to land and engage. It's all in your hands now. Good luck." Every member of the team heard this transmission.

"Right. This won't be anything like a regular engagement. The aliens are using weapons we have never seen before so be careful. Try not to shoot any civilians if you can help it and watch your buddies. This is going to get nasty."

The grim faces in the Skyranger nodded in response to his words and Egon set about preparing for his role in the fight.

Which briefly summarized was move in first, keep his confident and kill anything not friendly. Fairly easy duty that.

There was the by now familiar change in engine pitch as they moved in for landing.

"Oh and it might be an idea to mask your faces." He pulled out his own balaclava to now unused, took off his helmet and put it on. The rest of the team mirrored him. 

"Well then. We seem to have pissed of the aliens somewhat fierce. I see no need to stop doing that now. Let's give them more hell than usual!" He had timed it perfectly as he felt the thud of the craft hitting ground. Egon turned and dashed down the ramp the moment it dropped.

And came face to face with two grays with their usual indecipherable expressions, though for a moment he thought they seemed surprised.

They started raising their weapons but Egon was faster and raised his rifle sending one of them straight to hell courtesy of the Heckler & Koch express with a pair of barks from his G3.

The second one was expedited by Sergeant Cockburn with an Heavy cannon AP shell that didn't leave enough left of the alien's chest to match the mass of the daily diet of an average anorexic super-model.

He wondered why the hell they had risked running into a firefight as they left the ramp.

'Oh right.' He had told the Skyranger pilot to get them as close to the fight as possible. Apparently he'd taken it a bit too literally.

"Two Tango's down. Be alert we're closer than I expected." Cursing overly literal transport pilots under his breath he moved onwards not waiting for the team to finish fanning out of the Skyranger. He didn't want to bunch up more than necessary.

After action reports would write this down as tactical brilliance from Captain Olsen placing them in a position among the alien force where they couldn't effectively respond and which would become standard procedure for all Terror site insertions.

Nobody but Jessica Hawkins suspected the truth that this was just a screw-up that worked out okay. Though why it worked out okay she'd be in strong disagreement with the other one who knew the truth as Egon would claim that because they were a skilled and tightly knit team they managed to recover and turn it from disadvantage to advantage she'd say dumb luck.

As they moved out they became acutely aware of the horror that surrounded them. There was a constant noise of plasma fire and screams and the occasional explosions. It lent a sense of urgency to their entire operation. They had to stop this while there was still someone left to save.

He became aware that Patel was following him with the other heavy cannon without orders. It was increasingly working out like that as they grouped up into pairs without orders and moved as one. That'd serve them well today. They had landed in what appeared a yard in a middle class neighborhood and the logical place to head was for the nearest street.

The aliens seemed to be avoiding the main urban core and instead stick to the outlying areas of the city.

As he approached the street corner a door opened. Egon raised his rifle but stopped as he saw it was a terrified young man.

The man spoke something in German. Egon released his hold on his rifle and let it's strap prevent him from dropping to the ground and held up his hands in what he hoped would be a placating gesture. It seemed to work. Egon pointed him towards where the Skyranger was landed.

"I'm directing a civilian to the Skyranger. I order you all to redirect other civilians towards it so we can evacuate them if it becomes too hot."

"Affirmative."

He and Patel took up positions next to the corner as he peeked around. A single Gray stood stupidly in the middle of the street firing at a building where the presumably was somebody alive. Egon raised his rifle and fired several shots into the head of the little bastard.

"Tango down."

For a moment Egon felt a weird sensation. He couldn't think of any words that could describe it except alien, but as quick as it arrived it was gone. Whatever it was it didn't seem to be a big issue.

He did however see a slight movement from a shop across the street and dived back behind the corner as a plasma bolt blew straight through the piece of the wall he had been behind an instant before.

"Patel blast that bastard!" Patel obliged by stepping up and firing a pair of HE shells straight into the shop the shot had come from pretty much instantly killing it. 

"Tango down. It was hiding in a shop. This place has dozens of hiding places and I recommend we don't hesitate to blow them up if there's no civilians in there."

"Change that from recommendation to order." Egon clarified.

"Two tangos down. They barely started reacting to us when we got them. We seem to have caught them napping."

"Good going captain. Dropping right into the middle of them was bloody brilliant."

"Yeah, brilliant" came Hawkins voice sarcastically.

"C'mon let's kill some more before they recover." Egon dashed down the street hugging the walls for some protection. Patel followed closely behind.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

They had suspected the interlopers to appear, but not like this.

Their operation had been simple. The Cyberdisks attacked active opposition, while the sectoids mopped up where they had passed. 

The interlopers had dropped in right in the mop up group and caught them off guard. Already they were taking inconvenient losses. That had to be dealt with.

Their leader gave a psionic order to regroup and prepare for an actual fight. As well as call the cyberdisks back to deal with them.

The interlopers were by far the greatest threat on the battlefield and had to be dealt with first.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

A GSG-9 squad was in a pitched and futile fight with a Cyberdisk, half of their number dead or dying. When suddenly the cyberdisk ceased fire and started moving back.

"What happened?"

"They are pulling back? We did enough damage to scare it off?"

"Or did they just find somebody better to fight?"

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"The greys seem to falling back and grouping up. The easy kills are over."

"We got a lot while it lasted. Everyone proceed with caution."

Egon was grinning. Half a dozen civilians were secured and seven dead grays. It was remarkably effective killing so far. That was when things changed.

The noise was barely audible. He wasn't sure what he had heard that hinted to him that it was there, but something made him peak around the corner.

"What the hell is that?" Patel asked as they peered around the corner.

"I have no idea. Looks like some sort of miniature UFO. Watch out!" Egon yelled as the disk shaped thing opened fire and intense plasma fire tore up the walls around them.

Egon pushed Patel out of the way and barely avoided being flash-fried himself as suddenly their cover was just gone after the torrent of fire.

"Move it!" He pushed Patel to his feet.

"Unknown type of hostile. Some sort of hovering heavy weapons platform. Very heavily armed and very aggressive." He called out as they fell back.

Egon turned and fired several shots that all hit dead on, but none of them seemed to do anything to the machine, and he barely got out of the way before the return fire took him out of existence and instead it took the wall behind him.

"Rifle fire seems utterly ineffective we need heavy weapons fire."

"Allow me." Patel swung around what remained of the corner and put a pair of HE shells onto the machine. One missed, the other hit dead on and it was obscured by the blast.

For a brief instant it seemed they had won. Then the machine floated out of the blast still operational.

"Crap."

"I'll try AP shells. Perhaps they can punch through to it."

"Right. I'll distract it in the meantime."

"What? Oh crap. Sarge the Captain is doing something insane again."

Egon dashed from cover on one side and onto the other. The machine fired but an instant too slow and shredded part of the wall on that side. Egon popped up and put a few rounds into it all in all keeping the attention on himself nicely.

Patel finished reloading and opened fire again. The first shell was HE, and missed wide blowing up the house behind the machine even more. The second and third were both AP and tore deep rents into the machine and it seemed to stagger for a moment.

"Whoo! Finish it off!"

It attempted to retarget on Patel, but just before it managed it Patel put a two more shells into it and it collapsed onto the road and exploded in a terrific (For the size of what made it) blast.

"All right people. AP shells from the heavy weapons work, but watch out when they die. They got explosive tendencies. Tango down by the way."

"Uh captain."

"What Patel?"

"There's at least one more."

"Oh shit."

From the other end of the street another cyberdisk came hovering towards them.

"Please tell me you brought more than one AP clip. Lie if you have to."

"I brought more than one AP clip."

"You need to learn to lie better."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Hawkins, and Ben-Yaddar moved forward carefully, about one street over Desperaux and Sergeant Coburn were moving. Lockheart and Sayuri were off to try to support the Captain and Patel if they could get there before those machines got them.

That's when it floated into view.

"One of the machines, dead ahead." They dodged into cover just in time as plasmafire devastated the general street they'd been in.

"I'll take care of it." Ben-Yaddar popped up for a quick missile from his launcher, but either bad luck or the machine detecting the threat meant that it dipped slightly at that moment and allowed the missile to pass straight over it and impact on a wall further back blowing a good sized hole in it.

"Cover me while I reload." Ben-Yaddar had obviously seen actual combat at some point and was adapting well.

She popped up and fired a few shots before diving back down. That was when suddenly she felt more than saw it in the corner of her eye.

Somehow a gray had done one of those sneak up moments the reports mentioned so often and pulled a clean bead on Ben-Yaddar. She moved as fast as she could to get her FAL in line with it, but it wasn't fast enough.

There was the green flash she had been so fortunate to not see so many off before this mission and Ben-Yaddar collapsed as the shot partially cut through the side of his lower torso.

The FAL spoke its displeasure of these events in a three round barrage that knocked the gray dead with the solidity of its arguments.

She was stunned for a brief second. She had checked that sector. She had known it was safe. How the hell had the alien gotten so close and just popped up like that without being spotted?

There was a groan from Ben-Yaddar he was still alive.

"Tango down. Need help with large tango. Treating wounded soldier." She reported quickly

She knew the machine was getting closer, but the man on the ground was so injured that moving him wasn't an option. And she wouldn't abandon a living but injured soldier long as she was alive. That went against everything she was.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Lockheart and Sayuri were trying to reach the captain to give him some heavy cannon support without having to cross a street under fire by one of the machines when they ran into a bit of a hindrance.

"There's two aliens down there between us and the captain. Shit I think they saw us. I'll handle it." He started to lift the autocannon he had lucked into getting for this mission ready to give them a triple helping of HE when it started.

It was a sense of panic unlike anything he had felt before, it momentarily froze him completely.

"Lockheart are you okay?"

He gritted his teeth. He was not going to let fear stop him. He forced himself to act and sluggishly kept moving. Then suddenly without warning it let go and it was as if it was never there.

"Lockheart answer..." She just shut up like that.

"Yeah I'm okay. Sayuri?" What instincts he had gained from fighting aliens made him turn towards her something telling him there was a greater threat here than the aliens down there.

What he saw was the rookie with her eyes glazed over lifting her rifle towards him.

"Sayuri what are you doing?"

There was a loud gunshot. 

Then the alien mind controlling Sayuri directed her to move to get a better shot at the captain so they could take him down without exposing themselves.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Egon swore as part of the wall on the other side of the street collapsed. That made his teammate and subordinate all the more exposed. That was when he saw that Patel was already on the ground clutching his leg.

"Patel what's your status?"

"I think I broke my leg when part of that wall fell on it. I can't move sir. Sorry."

The machine was hovering down the street. It wouldn't be long before it saw the wounded soldier and killed him.

"Damn. All right I'll draw it off. Hawkins get over here as soon as you can. Damn we need more medics."

He pulled a grenade from his harness and threw it at the disk, it blew up next to it as expected doing little to no damage as the fragments didn't have the armor piercing capability needed to actually harm it.

It did get its attention though

"Hey you mechanical dinner plate! Over here!" He fired several shots diving back into cover as the return fire came after him. 

It was working. The machine was following him and not going after Patel.

As he saw it start moving to in front of the alley he was in he dashed into a side door to a store praying it wasn't locked.

It wasn't, but he found himself face to face with a pair of sectoids.

He got the impression they were as surprised to see him as he was them.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Hawkins was working feverously to save Ben-Yaddars life. It wasn't going well. She had her doubts even a full hospital crew could save his life, but she wouldn't give up. She could practically feel the miniature UFO closing on her now, but she still wasn't leaving.

She could see it now. Still quite a bit away but had entered LOS. This was it.

Suddenly she saw something so impossible to believe that she refused to admit it was happening for a moment. 

Jean Desperaux had apparently taken the time to run up the building next to it and now dropped straight down on top of the cyberdisk.

There was a whine as it struggled with the weight and started sinking towards the ground. Desperaux struggled to maintain balance as he worked with something. Then slapped it down on it and jumped dashing around a corner as the satchel charge he had put down blew.

The shockwave crushed the cyberdisk against the ground wrecking several vital systems but somehow not setting off a larger explosion.

The wreck laid there harmlessly.

"Hah! Alien death machine 0, generally awesome and great human individual 1!"

As he spoke the wall next to him disintegrated as a cyberdisk farther down opened fire on him despite the cover in the way and he yelped as he dived into cover.

There was still more cyberdisks out there.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Egon was fast with the rifle but at this range he wouldn't be fast enough. Instead he swung the rifle the other way and hit the closest one hard with the swing of a rifle butt. It didn't really hurt it much but it knocked the alien back.

He followed up by grabbing it. The aliens were a lot more resistant to things like pain, but they were smaller and weaker than humans so he easily forced it's hands around enough to point it's plasma pistol at the other sectoid working to bring it's rifle in line to fire it.

The alien weapons wouldn't work unless an alien used them, they didn't know why, that was just how it was right now. Still right now technically it was the alien using them. And it was apparently good enough for the weapon as the green flash burned down the other sectoid in one shot as opposed to the 2-20 shots it seemed to take to take one down normally.

Egon wanted one of these.

He tossed the alien to the floor and stomped hard on its neck repeatedly.

As he let up it was still alive if gurgling. So he brought the rifle up and finished it. He wasn't quite sure why he did that, but just letting it lie there didn't feel right. He was either being blood thirsty or merciful he figured. Perhaps even both.

Whatever it was he had lost situational awareness for a moment he just became painfully aware of as the cyberdisk started reaching the door.

Unless a miracle happened he was pretty much fucked.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Suddenly Sayuri became aware again. She had no idea how she had gotten where she was or where her teammate was.

She hadn't gotten far. She saw a pair of legs that led to around a corner. She walked up afraid of what she'd find.

There laid Eric Lockheart his eyes open. There was a bleeding hole that did not look like they were from alien weapons. What had happened?

Then she saw heard a shot and saw the captain over the street standing over something rifle pointing down.

She was about to speak to make her presence known when the Cyberdisk floated into view. She dived for Lockheart's autocannon and came up just as it went far enough that the Captain would see it too.

Just as the Captain decided he was fucked she opened fire. She didn't have time to reload with AP so it was a rain of HE shells at full auto. Some went wide, but thanks to the wall next to the cyberdisk even those were within splash range.

She got off 9 shots before the autocannon jammed.

That much jostling about was not good for the disk's internal components and it collapsed, and then exploded. She couldn't see what had happened to the captain. He had started to get the hell away from there when she started firing, but had he gotten far enough?

"Captain are you still alive?"

"I'm a bit bruised but still okay. Did Lockheart fire those shots?"

"No. Lockheart is down."

"Damn."

"Do anyone have any bloody AP ammo left? We're under attack by a cyberdisk and out of anything that can hurt it." Sergeant Cockburn at the voice.

"Did lockheart have any AP rounds left?"

Sayuri looked down. There was a blue colored clip that indicated it was full. She picked it up.

"He did."

"Reload it with that and come with me. We're bailing the rest of the team out."

"Roger."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

The final cyberdisk on the battlefield was bearing down on the X-com team. It was battered, ragged and torn, but it was still intact. 

And they had nothing left to throw at it that could finish it off.

Even so they still tried. Short rifle bursts before diving back behind cover that was destroyed almost immediately afterwards. Then move on. They kept trying.

If the machine had any ability to recognize courage it'd be impressed. These people just didn't give up.

If it understood annoyance it'd be annoyed that these people just wouldn't die.

If it had the ability to understand the overall picture of the situation and act on it without any of it's now dead sectoid crew it'd wonder just why the humans kept fighting when there was nothing left worth fighting over and they could just withdraw until sufficient firepower was available.

And it might realize that the humans weren't entirely out of ability to fight back with.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Where the hell is that bloody autocannon?" Sarge yelled for the fifth time as another small store got utterly destroyed by plasma fire.

"It won't get here any faster just because you yell." Desperaux commented.

"It better bloody well do!"

"Everyone get down!" Suddenly came from behind them

Running in an awkward manner both Sayuri and Olsen were carrying the autocannon and now Olsen dropped down on a knee to fire it the moment the Cyberdisk floated into sight.

The Cyberdisk having no idea of just what awaited it flew right into the line of fire and got several nice long bursts of 20mm armor piercing for its troubles. It fell to the ground and exploded just like most the others had.

"That the last of them?"

"I think so. Listen."

"I don't hear anything."

"Exactly. Complete silence. I think we did it."

"So what do we do now?"

"A final sweep, gather up our fallen and wounded and get out of here. It got a bit wild out there so I sort of lost overview. Who did we lose despite Lockheart?"

"We lost him?" Nobody noticed the guilty twinge from Sayuri.

"Yeah, where's Ben-Yaddar?"

"He didn't make it."

"Damn." He grimaced. This had been a bad one.

"Not to sound callous or anything, but if you are done killing the aliens could somebody tend to my leg?" Patel still sat where he had fallen and waited for help and despite lost friends was getting a bit annoyed at being forgotten.

"Right. Take care of the living first. Hawkins, Desperaux, take care of it. The rest of you come with me."

As they walked Sarge switched off his radio to talk without being listened to.

"I don't think this is the end of it. It'll just keep escalating from here."

"Yeah." Egon said in a tired voice.

"And not just from their side, but from ours. After this they can't ignore the aliens any more. They'll have to take action."

"Hopefully it'll take some of the weight off us."

"Hopefully they won't tear the team up to provide veterans for the new teams."

"Could you stop being a pessimist please."

"Hey I am the one who is supposed to ground your crazy arse to the Earth with some cold realism."

"That's true sarge. That's true."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Next time on X-com: First to fight.

"In light of the new developments we are authorizing a massive expansion of the X-com project." The US representative said on behalf of the entire room.

"Thank you sirs." Commander Thornton said, however inside he was seething. Finally they got off their asses when it got too big to entirely brush under the carpet.

Well at least it came at a good enough time.

"You have however been reassigned."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Can we use the existing combat team as cadre?" The officer asked.

"That would not be a good idea. They have unusual ideas of training."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Can somebody tell me just why the directional lines have been repainted leading everybody to the mess hall?"

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"In light of not being the only X-com combat team anymore your team is hereby redesignated to the First X-com combat team or Team 1 for short, our first force to fight the aliens, but no longer the last."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Those guys are lunatics. How the hell did Commander Thornton keep them in line?!"

"His notes imply that as long as casualties were kept down they were allowed to do as they pleased."

"Are everyone on this base raving mad?"

X-com First to Fight: Change and Growth.


	4. Episode 4: Change and growth

"So why are we here?" Steven Gough asked.

"Beats me. I didn't even know we had a briefing room" Jessica Hawkins replied. She also wondered privately why even their wounded were asked to attend. Gough was mostly healed and just on light duty, but Patel was wearing a full cast on his leg. She didn't think he could do any duty they might get right now.

Jessica took in the room and its occupants. Captain Olsen and Sergeant Coburn weren't present. She hoped that the change in attitude, like using the proper briefing room instead of doing all of it in the hangar or mess hall, was a result of a more professional attitude. The last mission was hopefully bad enough to force them to switch to more professional methods.

Gough was here as she had earlier noted, he seemed to be generally content, which was surprising as she'd heard he was in a funk for having been forced to sit out the recent missions due to the wound.

Patel however seemed to be holding up fine despite his wound. He was a naturally easygoing person.

Desperaux was bored and seemed absurdly amused by playing with a pen. At least he wasn't picking a fight with her then.

Sayuri was the biggest mystery in the room. She had been quiet even before the terror mission, but now she seemed to try and act as if she didn't exist. Something was bothering her big time, and nobody seemed to be able to get through to her.

It probably had something to do with how Lockheart had died, but as she mused on what might have happened the door opened.

"Atten-SHUN!" Sergeant Coburn called. That set off some bells as he never bothered with that before. Simply put Captain Olsen never seemed to care, but she and the rest of the room dutifully came to attention with the exception of Patel who was still injured.

Captain Olsen and an officer she didn't recognize entered as Coburn stood next to the door. The new officer was tall, in his late thirties and had an aura of 'I'm in charge' around him.

Startled she realized that the rank bars identified the unknown officer as a Colonel, a rank that X-com theoretically had but wasn't currently in use.

She also noted that Olsen while he hid it well seemed to not be happy about him being here.

She allowed herself to hope.

"At ease Gentlemen." The colonel said.

"I'm Colonel Jonathan Croft and we're here to discuss the fate of this team in light of X-com's current reorganization."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

X-com: First to Fight

Change and Growth

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

The X-com funding council meeting was not the usual fare where for the most part the primary funders were at best apathic, at worst trying to measure if X-com had made the gains they felt that could be reasonably expected regarding alien technology and should be terminated to gain them.

Right now they were scared.

"You are sure this won't end up having been just a onetime occurrence?"

He knew that they had already heard from their analysts what he was about to say, but also that they really didn't want that to be true.

"Now that the genie is out of the bottle and they have once disregarded keeping a low profile on Earth I don't believe they will just go back to business as usual. They crossed a pretty big line doing what they did."

" Then in light of the new developments we are authorizing a massive expansion of the X-com project." The US representative said on behalf of the entire room.

"Thank you sirs." Commander Thornton said however inside he was seething. Finally they got off their asses when it got too big to entirely brush under the carpet.

It was better late than never. Now they'd finally have the resources and cooperation to pursue more aggressive strategies that could actually impede the aliens operations instead of just grabbing the occasional UFO for interesting technology to steal.

And at least it came at a good enough time when morale in the existing force was at an all time high.

"You have however been reassigned."

"Wait what?" He forgot his posture for a moment.

"It was deemed that while an officer of your caliber was appropriate for the previous incarnation of X-com, for the new X-com you simply lack vital qualifications."

'Translation: It was acceptable to use a throw away officer that would have been inconvenient when we didn't care, but now that we're scared we want somebody more appropriate by our political standards for the job. I should have figured.' He barely restrained his fury.

"And what pray tell will my new assignment be?"

"That will be up to the new commander of X-com to decide. Even with the changes in the charter we cannot affect internal X-com decisions without a 2/3rds majority."

'Of course they'd keep that one as every nation is afraid of being overrun by a coalition of others and lose any influence they have.'

"I see. When will the new command staff arrive?"

"They should already have arrived and started the preparation for the re-organization."

'You Vultures didn't even wait until the corpses from Berlin were cold before you put your greedy fingers into the pie.'

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

'Reorganization?' That was the thought that flashed through the mind of every squaddie in the room.

"In light of recent events X-com will be seeing a massive expansion of both force and area of operations. The issue however is that there are only seven people who have fought against the aliens and are still alive. And that is you people."

"Are you going to split up the team?" Gough asked worriedly.

"If we find it necessary yes, but we are going to avoid it if at all possible. We would rather not interfere with what works. As it stands we do intend to put several more teams into the field, albeit for the immediate future we're short on lift capacity for them. We have one Skyranger on site, but demands elsewhere mean that it'll be a while before we can get more."

Colonel Croft looked around the room as if daring anyone else to ask more questions before he had finished this briefing.

"The changes that will affect you immediately are the resizing of a combat team from eight to eleven including an additional sergeant, you would normally get one from outside the unit, but your captain has made a case of promoting from within, so that he will handle later. Squads will also be rotated in and out of duty on a weekly basis, with one squad on alert, another on standby and the final team is in stand down. As this team has pushed way beyond what the new guidelines state is acceptable alert time you are the first ones standing down.

The look that came around now caught them off guard. He looked at the assembled soldiers with respect.

"In light of not being the only X-com combat team anymore your team is hereby re-designated to the First X-com combat team or Team 1 for short, our first force to fight the aliens, but no longer the last."

That way it was phrased more than anything told them the most fundamental change of X-com. It was no longer just a 'We're doing something' measure. Now X-com was the frontline against the aliens. Now X-com existed to win.

"Further briefing will be the responsibility of Captain Olsen." He got up the soldiers coming to attention as he left.

"Right. I'll be brief as frankly I'm swamped. We'll be getting four new soldiers shortly and some nifty support hardware, you guys are off duty until further notice but I haven't been able to secure any form of liberty yet so we're limited to base. I'll get back to you when I have more to tell you. Dismissed." Must have been the room itself, it made him feel more militaristic than usual.

"Oh and Hawkins I'd like to have a word with you."

She stopped, Egon correctly read that she was apprehensive. His guess was that it was because she'd lodged protests at him repeatedly and it was ignored. That sort of thing tended to sour relations with most officers.

Egon wasn't most officers and he was proud of that fact.

"I've gone over the roster and out of the current team members you are the best choice for our new sergeant."

He like to think he was above such things as getting worked up over things like her behavior, but even so the look of shock on her face was immensely satisfying.

"Wait what?!"

"Just so you know this whole talk is off the record. I don't think you are going to accept, at least not until we've got more medics. So refusal won't hurt your career later down the line. You are however my first choice for the job."

She wouldn't accept, he'd known that before he offered. Still, if he'd just promoted someone else without apparently considering her she'd be resentful as they'd both know she was best qualified of the options. If he'd offered officially from the get go she'd feel trapped and be resentful either way.

Sure she may be smart enough to realize it intellectually, but one of the key issues she had with him was that she had spent more time learning her job than he had training and active duty combined. And she'd actually had a rather eventful duty for peacetime standards.

Dealing with intra team conflicts involving himself and a subordinate was like juggling live hand grenades. This wouldn't fix it, but it was a start.

"You are right. I don't want the job now. Thank you for the offer though. Anything else?"

"Not at this moment no. Dismissed." Egon watched her leave, and then swore to himself never ever to use this room again. It made him all stiff and formal.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Hangar 2 which had up to recently housed Interceptor 1 was a beehive of activity. The equipment needed to equip a combat team, or even three, wasn't that much. The equipment needed to support several combat teams did. There was also the fact that despite having sizeable engineering departments and research labs they hadn't been kitted for more than a token complement of them.

In short they were receiving a shitload of stuff and they were rushing it hard. And of course they were in typical bureaucratic fashion not receiving it in any effective order so sorting out what took priority and what did not wasn't easy.

Technically the newly named Team 1 didn't have any stake in this for at least a week. In reality for the sweet stuff it was first come, first serve.

That's why Sergeant Cockburn was down here, to secure the best stuff for the veteran team.

It was basically a military version of dibs.

This approach also nicely explained why they had pre-filled requisitions for the autocannon for well into the next millennia.

Today's haul was very light though. As far as weaponry went the X-com armories were very well stocked as far as a single squad went. And Team 1 had ensured themselves first pick there.

There was in fact as far as he could tell only one new weapon.

They looked like miniature tanks, each mounting a singular 25 mm cannon, far wider and longer than a man, though not as tall. As far as he could tell they were remote controlled drones

If they had one of these the earlier missions they'd probably not have taken anywhere near the losses they did.

He looked over them trying to judge which one would be in best shape, but being unfamiliar with them could only make a wild guess.

Still he picked one, noted the serial numbers and set off to write a requisition for it. These things looked like they could come in handy.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Hey Sharif, up and walking again I see?" Egon had been waiting for him to show up, everyone showed up in the mess hall sooner or later.

"Yes captain." "Skip the captain. You are on sick leave, therefore off duty, therefore formality stays home. Right now I'm Egon."

"Yes Egon." Sharif Patel prided himself on his ability to take things in a stride and remain calm no matter what the situation. It took more than an alien invasion and a highly unconventional commanding officer to beat that.

"Right anyhow. Medical ward treating you well?"

"Yes captain. No testing alien probing equipment or anything." Sharif said with his characteristic small smile.

"Heh, I didn't consider that, we better misfile any probing equipment we capture just to make sure we avoid that. The doctors here are much too fond of poking people. Well that should have gotten the small talk out of the way. I think you've already guessed what I want to talk about."

"You want me to be the new sergeant." It wasn't a difficult guess. There were only so many possibilities and he had realized that Hawkins turned it down, and that only left Him, Desperaux, Gough and Sayuri.

Out of the other three Gough was too green, Desperaux a touch too crazy and Sayuri didn't seem to handle pressure well.

"Yup. You stand up to pressure well and keep calm. Which as it's about the opposite of me and Sarge rounds the team out well"

"Well then. I accept. Do I get a pay raise?"

"To be honest I'm still not sure. They reworked X-com's procedures and charter pretty thoroughly. I'm working through it now. Some of this stuff is pretty weird."

"Like?"

"Well for instance X-com is allowed to sell equipment, but procedures are rather controlled as to ensure it doesn't go outside the funding nations, but the checks on the seller are pretty damn poor. A single individual who could somehow either mess with the inventory and cover it up, or simply not report getting it in the first place could easily sell the loot through legal channels provided they can avoid internal X-com investigations. They basically want as much of X-com's loot as they can grab without making it look like they are breaking restrictions."

"So basically they encourage X-com pirate operations?"

"Yar Matey." Egon nodded with his usual grin.

The one thing Sharif could say for sure about serving in this unit was that it was always interesting.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Hey Sayuri wait!"

She rounded the corner giving no indications that she could have heard him. He reached the corner only to find that there were nobody around it. Egon groaned.

"People who keep avoiding the people who happen to be trying to help them as well as happen to be their direct superiors are pretty damn annoying." He said out loud pretty sure that she was still close enough to hear him.

"Said people can count their lucky stars that I'm too busy to take the time to track their hiding places down, but can rest assured that as soon as I can reduce it to manageable levels I will track them down and have words with them."

Egon turned and left muttering under his breath about overreacting rookies.

Okay so Lockheart had died from a FAL bullet and she was the only one who could have fired it. Accidents happened, and the only thing you could do if you survived (both physically and career) was to learn from them.

There was the possibility that it wasn't an accident, but for the difficulty he had in reading her he couldn't envision her murdering a teammate. Still he wanted to know exactly what went down. Her report of events was extremely vague. Before that he would have to stop what appeared to be a rapidly approaching breakdown on her part.

He came close to thinking that it was good that at least they didn't have to worry about combat missions while he sorted things out but he caught himself before he could. Tempting fate was not a wise decision in a situation like this.

Somewhere fate went 'Damn I almost got him.'

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Meeting a new commanding officer was like playing hopscotch near a former frontline area in a third world nation with a penchant for landmines. It'll go right thousands of times, but there's always the worry that this is the one time where you run into a nasty anti-personnel mine that perforates your lower body.

Olsen really shouldn't have done that high school project on the effect of landmines.

"Captain Olsen reporting as ordered."

The commander was well dressed and groomed, an obvious office officer, probably hadn't seen field work for years if not decades.

"Ah I've been waiting for you. I'm Commander Andrew Hunter, your new commanding officer. Sorry to say that while Thornton is a good officer the funding council thought he isn't suitable commanding for the sort of operations X-com will be undertaking after we finish restructuring."

The tone was friendly, there were no intentional accusations against Thornton veiled or otherwise and anyone who realized the score would agree that casualty-sensitive Thornton probably couldn't handle a much larger scale operation against the aliens.

Even so the statement rubbed Egon the wrong way. It was tailored. The man had gotten a good enough read of him to realize that as Egon had a very good working relationship with Thornton he'd probably be wary of his replacement, and had picked the words carefully as to try to assuage any negative reactions.

"Well sir that is over my pay grade. I'm just an inexperienced officer trying to do my duty to the team and earth."

Hunter was the type of person who dealt with people by figuring out how they worked and putting on the right mask to deal with them. He was a manipulator of sorts that worked with their perceptions to get a positive one almost exclusively. Hunter seemed to be a career oriented person, the type who put that as top priority. He wasn't the type common in fiction that would piss away his troops for nothing though. He was still human enough to care a bit about people under his command, but he deliberately kept his distance open as to be more able to see them as resources than people.

What bothered Egon about this was that he too read people and then used that to better deal with them if he felt he needed a positive response. He liked to think he only did that if it was vital.

But were they really that different?

"Don't sell yourself short. You've done good, managing to take a team that was known for 100 turnover every three missions or so and turn them into a viable combat team. That's an impressive achievement. Even though one of your squaddies seems to make it a point to file a complaint against you after every single mission, even though Thornton seems to have ignored everything after the first two."

"Well yeah. Hawkins and I have a professional disagreement in how to do things, but as long as it doesn't affect how she does in the field or she doesn't try to undermine my authority with the unit I figure that she might as well use it to get rid of aggression. Freedom of speech and all that."

Hunter smiled.

"Your reputation for attitude is well deserved I see. Well my impression of you is that you are a capable if unconventional officer. I was a bit worried given the reputation X-com used to have that I'd have to replace our most experienced field officer. Glad to see the worries were unfounded." A smile that appeared to be disarming and totally honest spread over his face.

It was supposed to show trust and inspire loyalties in subordinates. It was also completely fake. He didn't really care that much one way or the other about Egon or his team, but he wanted Egon to think that he did to ease his job, manipulating Egon for his own ends.

What really bothered Egon was that he could see himself doing the same thing under the right circumstances. He had handled Hawkins rather similar.

Right now Egon's extent of masks to his squad was to put on confidence and hide his fears, well maybe a bit concealing the urge to yell at Hawkins face for being such a pain in the ass, but that was it.

He swore to himself to keep it at that, basic officer's mask that anyone wore. He did not want to risk going down the path to Hunter.

"Hm. Something wrong?" Hunter asked at his silence.

"Oh sorry sir was just thinking about how to best manage my team. I'm a bit swamped at the moment."

"Ah. Then I won't keep you any longer. We can't afford to have our best team lose its edge. Dismissed Captain, and keep up the good work."

"Yes sir."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Egon had looked at his file before going here, the kid was a fair pilot, but had a reputation for recklessness. Not that Egon could hold that against anyone without sounding hypocritical.

"Hey there Fournier."

"Captain." The pilot started to get to attention, but Egon waived him down.

"This is just a social call. I realized I didn't really know the guy responsible for lifting us in and out of hot combat zones with our skins intact and it might be a good idea to do something about that."

Alphonse Fournier, french. A year older than Olsen, and about three times as many disciplinary counts on his record. It stood out that he'd associated a lot with the troops early on before the first missions. Then he'd started hanging to himself as casualties started mounting.

"Heh. Glad to be appreciated Captain. So what did you have in mind? Just talking?"

"I was thinking more participating the team activities, you seem to have an active imagination and we could use that. If you want to I'd like you at the team meeting tomorrow afternoon. We'll be receiving a few more recruits as well as trying to figure out next few days training." It didn't take a genius to figure out what Egon was referring to.

"Oh yeah I'm in. You guys have been funny so far."

"Glad to have you on board Alphonse." Egon grinned.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Sayuri wait up that's an..." Door slammed shut.

"... Order." Egon groaned before he walked up to the door.

"I know you are in there. I'm sorely tempted to go get some explosives from the armory to open this door."

He was also seriously considering testing his sidearm on the door, but rejected it as he had no idea whether it'd work or just ricochet dangerously about. Besides he'd fired the pistol he was issued twice since arriving. .45 just didn't work very well on the aliens.

"This isn't over squaddie. Next time a locked door won't stop me." He promised the closed door.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"What are you doing Captain?" Egon looked up from the notes he was reading to see Sergeant Cockburn (Need to snicker: Rising) sitting down across the mess hall table.

"Wondering what I can do to save my paycheck."

"Paying for those pranks out of your own pockets too much?"

"Yeah are you aware just how much it costs to buy several dozen liters of pink paint suitable for painting a very high velocity fighter without impeding performance or being worn off by the speed and having it delivered overnight."

"No, and I'd rather not. What sort of scheme do you have in mind now?"

"I was thinking of selling alien corpses." Egon said with a grin.

"What!!"

"Apparently the funding countries are willing to pay up to 20000 for them."

"You are out of your mind!"

"Hey it's just an idea."

"And we all know what happens when you get ideas!"

"I'm not going to use it to line my pockets. I was thinking a fund for supporting the team. Training equipments, extra pay to beneficiaries if we lose them, that sort of thing." The statement was tacky but totally honest. In all honesty Egon didn't need any extra pay with the paychecks he got here, provided he could preserve that one and not lose it all paying for the teams little unofficial 'operations'-

"Do rules mean anything to you?" The sergeant was fighting an aneurism

"Rules were made for a reason. The spirit of the law matters far more than the wording as far as I'm concerned. Following the word blindly seems rather short sighted."

"Basically rules are guidelines and you'll break them whenever they are in your way?"

"Yeah pretty much, but I'll always consider why they are there before I break them. Corruption rules are there to prevent people for getting unfair advantage, and to prevent the system from being harmed. Just selling an alien corpse and taking the money ourselves harms X-com as they lose money that could be used to support its field force, but selling the corpse and using the money on the team is as far as I'm concerned A-Ok as that is if used correctly a net gain for X-com."

"You are a bloody pirate."

"Yar matey." Egon grinned.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"I've been looking over the reports and I'm not so sure about our ability to handle this. The reports speak of pure slaughter. We're going to take nasty losses in the establishment phase at very least." Colonel Croft reported.

"I was afraid of that. Our orders are clear, the alien are to be treated as an invading force and opposed at all costs, but this is going to be costly." Commander Hunter grimaced.

"We are going over the reports to find any good ways to deal with the menace, but it's not going well. We have a few ideas, most of them from how Team 1 fought them, but several of their tactics are quite controversial, like leveling the entire battlefield so they just have to worry about the UFO."

"Quite. So we cannot use them as cadre?"

"Given how they operate. That wouldn't be a good idea. They are a very unconventional unit and I'd prefer to keep the number of such units to one. I don't think this base could even operate if all the combat teams mimicked them."

"Ah yes. Pranksters the lot of them, but if they get the job done I'm prepared to tolerate a bit. They are the heroes of Berlin after all."

"We should keep an eye on them though. In case they go too far."

"Did I ever say otherwise? Still they are very good troops and we can cut them a little bit of slack."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Egon was about to do something he was pretty sure he'd regret, but if he didn't it'd keep annoying him until he did something about it or something drastic happened.

"Hey Hawkins got a moment? I'd like to talk to you somewhere private." He was going to off the record tell Hawkins exactly what he felt about her whining.

Yeah he did expect to very likely get punched by an irate Special Forces trained woman who likely knew how to kill him five times before he could hit the ground. But it'd be worth it.

There was an office nearby which qualified for this sort of thing.

"Why are you taking off your rank bars?" Hawkins asked.

"Well I wanted to speak to you off the record and not as a superior to squaddie, but rather as person to person on a personal issue."

The expression on her face was interesting, worry, suspicion, possibly a dash of disgust. Yup as anticipated she was drawing the entirely wrong conclusion.

"While you are good at making enemies dead and keeping friendlies alive, you are seriously pissing me off!"

That misunderstanding made this line all the sweater to say.

"What?"

"Are you deaf? I said you are pissing me off. I've come to the conclusion that either you are doing it on purpose or you are retarded. You seem to be making it a sport to complain at every opportunity you can get away with it!"

"You want to do this well fine. You are a disgrace of an officer or even soldier who should never have been allowed within a mile of a military base! And I will do whatever I can to ensure that comes to pass and if you have a problem with that you'll have to kick me off the team!"

"I'll never accept a loss that I can do anything to avoid regardless of it being in combat or otherwise, but you wouldn't know anything about that would you!"

She looked like she had been struck, but he was on too much a roll to stop.

"If you had your way and we went about it in the same old fashion the entire team would be dead several times over! Did you even READ the old reports to compare?! Average of total turnover every three missions and you want me to go BACK to that?!"

"That is not what I'm saying!"

"You might as well be! Almost the entire team got slaughtered the first time I went out! Every soldier of X-com besides me and Sarge who joined before your batch did it your way and guess where they are?! Oh that's right; dead and fucking buried!"

As he said that she had been angry, very angry, but the moment he mentioned that every trooper was dead her anger seemed to explode and he realized he had misread her badly and his own anger evaporated instantly.

"So that's why you joined." He said in a low voice with eyes widening. She hadn't joined for the money as he thought she had.

Unfortunately for him Jessica seemed to not care the least about his sudden change and was at the point of violence.

Egon realized this just in time and took a hurried step back causing her first punch to miss, but then demonstrating that she was special forces and he was not she used the momentum of the first punch to carry over into another with her left hand faster than he could do anything after his awkward dodge and punched him straight in the face.

He was knocked hard on his ass. She could punch pretty damn hard. She stood there for a moment apparently contemplating murder then stalked out angrily.

He slowly got up nursing his jaw. He'd been right it had been worth it, though not for the reason he had anticipated. He understood her much better now and that'd help quite a bit, though on the downside his realization took some of the fun out of the yelling at her part.

She wasn't here because she needed money as he first assumed, but rather because she had lost people close to her, probably one or more squad mates who had joined X-com before her during the worst time and died for it. She had joined a bit because she needed to find out what had happened to them, and a bit because she wanted vengeance.

That altered things quite a bit.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Captain what happened to your face?"

"Nothing special just went to a debate under-armed." Egon grinned, but the grin evaporated as he saw that there were only nine people around the table he was arriving at, there should have been ten.

"Where's Sayuri? I need to talk to her."

"No-one knows. We haven't seen her all morning." Sarge answered.

"Damn. Okay new order. Anyone who sees her calls me immediately. I'll be wearing both tac-radio and Cell-phone. I'm getting really annoyed at this whole thing." And there was that nagging feeling that if he didn't do anything very soon something bad would happen. And none of the things he could envision were acceptable outcomes.

"Understood sir."

This had looked like it'd be such a good day too. Well apart from Hawkins seeming to plot his gruesome and horrible death, but Egon could live with that.

"Anyhow let's get down to business. We've got most of our new people. We'll get some sort of specialist in the next few days to fill out our roster. Would our new people care to introduce themselves?" He gestured for one of them to start speaking.

"I'm Thomas Chapman from Britain. They say this is extremely dangerous so I'm glad to get to work with the veterans."

"Estefan Moreno, Spain. This war's as good as won now that I'm here!"

"I'm Federico Lombardi from Italy. Is it true that you guys use pranks as training?"

Egon grinned.

"I see our reputation is spreading. Well then let's get down to the second part of our business and yes Lombardi we do. Now we're a touch short on supplies so we're going to have to compensate with imagination."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Johnson was lost, it wasn't supposed to be possible, but he was lost.

He stopped up as he reached the mess hall yet again. The lines intended to direct you to important areas didn't seem to lead anywhere but the mess hall.

Just around a few corners then back to the mess hall through a different entry. It appeared somebody had repainted all the lines to lead to the mess hall.

He really should have figured it out earlier what with the giant sign with 'Rome' written on it in the middle of the hall.

Somebody had creatively altered the menu list of the base too.

"Today's dinner is mutilated alien ala France with plasma blasted blood pudding for desert" the sign said proudly

"I'm going to kill that team. "

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"What is this supposed to mean?!" The Captain of the newly formed Team 2 yelled

The sheep bleated.

A sign had been hung on it: 'Standard issue X-com sexual relief sheep, please clean after each use.'

"Team 1 struck again I guess. I wonder how they got that sheep past security." One of the more long time base personnel commented.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Can somebody stop this noise!?"

The Doctor Who theme kept repeating over the loudspeakers ignoring the request as only a piece of machinery could.

"How can one team cause of this much havoc?"

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Egon was in a good mood when he set about tracking down Sayuri. The new team-members had taken the whole operations style of Team 1 a lot better than he'd expected. He was lucky with this batch albeit he'd have to watch Moreno who was too overconfident for his own good and take step to prevent another Fenix.

Egon had decided to start looking in the place he least wanted to be that she might be and work his way down, the hope being that she was smart enough to figure out which places he might avoid and then go there to avoid him.

The first place to check was her quarters which she shared with Hawkins. And given that Hawkins was both pissed and very lethal that'd be a very good reason to stay the hell away.

"Open the door Sayuri or I'll call base security." The voice of Hawkins in a bad mood carried down the corridor. That didn't bode well for avoiding the bodily harm quota of today.

"I'm serious."

He reached the corner and walked down the hallway towards the door.

"She's holed up in there?"

Hawkins spun around having been too intent on the door to notice him.

"Yes sir." She was good. She could make the sir sound like an insult without any change of tone at all. Egon couldn't help but be impressed.

"Sayuri open up we need to talk." No response. He didn't honestly expect one.

"I told you last time that I wouldn't be stopped by a locked door again." As team leader he had keys to the rooms of his troops. However as he tried to put it in he found that it wouldn't turn. He crouched down and looked closely.

"She's wrecked the lock. She really doesn't want anyone to get in. We're going to need tools." Egon felt a sense of urgency he couldn't quite explain.

"Well then you better get them. She's not going anywhere." Hawkins was still pissed.

"Crap you are right. There's no other way out of there, so she doesn't intend to leave."

"Well of course not. Wait what are you doing?" Her tone changed from sarcastic to worry.

Egon didn't know how he knew, but he knew they were almost out of time. That's why he took drastic action

"Putting a breaching charge on the door."

"Why the hell do you have a breaching charge?"

"In case I ran into a door I wanted to get through but couldn't. Get clear."

She dived aside as he set it off and blew the lock apart. Egon immediately rushed up to the door and looked in.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Hawkins cried out. Egon ignored her in face of the more pressing problem.

"Put the gun down Sayuri." That shut Hawkins up.

Sayuri was holding the rifle with the muzzle towards her face; Egon had no doubts that it was loaded. She was looking up towards the door obviously startled by the blast, but had been far enough away from it to not be hurt by it.

She didn't answer.

"I know things went to hell and that you ended up shooting a teammate, but accidents happen."

"It wasn't an accident." She replied in a quiet voice that sounded somewhat haunted.

"Then what did happen?" Egon asked, not primarily because he wanted to know but because every moment he spent talking was one she didn't spend shooting herself.

"I don't know. One minute we're talking and about to attack some aliens, the next he's dead from a single shot and I have no idea what happened the last minute or so. But I had only fired a single shot then. I don't have any shots unaccounted for. I killed him. It wasn't an accident or misfire. I must have aimed and killed him deliberately. But I can't remember doing so. I'm a danger to the team sir."

She was rambling. Not quite coherent, eaten up by guilt.

Egon saw a way out of it. He wouldn't like doing it, but it was the only thing he could see right now.

'I'm not losing anyone I can avoid.' He looked straight into her eyes then sneered.

"And killing yourself will fix it will it?" He said with as much derision as possible. First he had to shock her out of her current mental state, and for that he had to hit her hard verbally. Hurt her even more.

She didn't answer, but she flinched like she'd been slapped. Egon switched tacks immediately not letting it sink in.

"Yes Lockheart is dead and you might very well be responsible, but this way you'll only make things worse. Tell me could what happened out there happen again?"

He waited a few seconds then pressed again.

"Could it?"

"I don't know. Maybe." She answered.

"And could it happen again with somebody else than you out there?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I, but if the only known case kills herself before we can figure out exactly what happened we'll only know about it when it happens again, quite likely taking another person down in the process."

Now that he had shocked her he'd redirect her guilt a bit. Guilt saying that she had killed a teammate and she had convinced herself that she was a danger that had to be removed was the main problem. Then redirect it to guilt over having set things in place to let it happen again. This was a really cold way to go about it, but he could make amends if she survived.

She was frozen. She wasn't going to shoot unless he provoked her now, but she hadn't put away her gun either. Now was the time to switch from vinegar to honey.

"And nobody on the team blames you for it. None of us want you dead. We want to help. Let us. Just put the gun down and we'll sort this out. We'll figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, to you or to anyone else for that matter." He held out his hand towards her. It was a bit theatrical, but she wasn't mentally coherent enough to really consider that. She probably hadn't slept at all since the mission.

"Just put the gun down and we'll sort things out. Okay?"

The rifle clattered to the floor. Egon stiffened for a moment half expecting a discharge, but they got lucky and nothing more happened.

Sayuri collapsed sobbing. Something given the stress she was under Egon didn't fault her for.

"Captain Olsen to Medical. I need a team down in my Team's living area immediately." He said as he moved forward and held her. It was a bit to comfort her, but also to be able to restrain her should she change her mind about not killing herself. She still wasn't very stable.

He'd played her emotional states like a fiddle to get her to put her rifle down, he wasn't proud of himself for doing that, but he told himself it was necessary.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"I'm sorry Captain but no that's not an option."

"Sir I can handle it." Egon protested

"Maybe you can, maybe you can't, but this is a case where it really isn't worth taking the chance."

Egon wanted to keep Sayuri on the team and just give her a few weeks recovery before putting her back into duty while keeping a close eye on her. Commander Hunter had overridden him.

"Sir I'm good at this sort of thing."

"I don't doubt it. You did talk her out of pulling the trigger, but in this case it's better to remove her from X-com service completely. Ensure that she gets full treatment for her problems and maybe after that put her back into duty, but that's not going to be anytime soon."

The commander leant forward looking Egon straight into the eyes.

"I realize that you hate losing people, but not only isn't this your fault. You are the only reason she's still alive. You saved her life, but it's not your job to save her soul. Leave that to the professionals while you focus on the rest of your team, learn from it and prevent it from happening again. You are a good officer, but don't fall into the mistake of trying to do too much for your team. That'll tear both you and it apart."

"Yes sir." Commander Hunter was entirely correct and Egon knew it. It just felt wrong to just... Give up on Sayuri like that.

"Good job handling it though, as far as we can tell from security recordings she was just about to shoot when you blew the door. If you'd been a minute slower you'd have been too late. Why did you carry a breaching charge around anyway?"

Egon managed a grin. "Well you see sir. I always keep my word no matter what."

AN: I'm kinda embarrassed about it, but I finished this about the same time I posted part 3 and then forgot to upload it due to heavy workload at college right then. It's basically just been sitting on my hard drive the last few months until somebody called RTM sent me a message asking about it and reminded me. Sorry about that. Currently trying to bash my way through a writers block at part 5.


End file.
